


scenes from an unfinished story (told by the lost and found)

by freneticfloetry



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Actor AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Families of Choice, Love Confessions, M/M, Margo Has Sole Custody of the Brain Cell, Mutually Oblivious Pining, RomCom Fusion, Secret Animal Lover Eliot Waugh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 74,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26321062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/pseuds/freneticfloetry
Summary: Eliot Waugh is an actor on the brink of the biggest break of his career. Quentin Coldwater is a former child star turned aspiring screenwriter who's paying his dues as a glorified PA. Three years of near-constant contact has turned their codependent working relationship into a close, comfortable bond that one refuses to examine too closely and the other is reluctant to risk.When the studio behind Eliot's prospective new project expresses their doubts about his party boy public image, his reps brainstorm a way to make him more marketable: raffling off a night on the town on Eliot's arm. The winner is a wholesome farm boy from Brakebills, Texas, who makes such an impression that Eliot agrees to take a vacation from the spotlight to spend some time in Mike's tiny hometown. But somewhere between bar bathrooms and bad motels, Eliot might be brave enough to act on what he really wants… and Quentin might just manage to write his way to a happy ending.Loosely based, with liberal creative license, onWin a Date with Tad Hamilton.
Relationships: Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh, Mike McCormick/Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 140
Kudos: 172
Collections: Magicians Happy Ever After





	1. All Your Acting, Your Thin Disguise

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [[art] scenes from an unfinished story (told by the lost and found)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201338) by [rodeoclown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rodeoclown/pseuds/rodeoclown). 



> First of all, _omg, it's finished._ I don't quite know what to do with myself, except to read all the things.
> 
> In the interest of full disclosure, I hadn't seen the source film in ages when I saw the title on the list of available prompts, but this bunny came to me immediately. And when I finally did rewatch, it confirmed two things for me. One, I kind of hate this movie? And _hate_ is probably a strong word, and I don't want to offend anyone for whom it's a favorite, but I had a visceral reaction to a lot of the goings on (I'm looking at you, repeated instances of "guard your carnal treasure!") and not enough reaction to invest in the characters. Which brings me to two: for me, the most interesting thing about _Win a Date with Tad Hamilton_ is Tad Hamilton himself, and it was a kind of a shame that the film didn't seem to realize it. But hey, that's what fanfic is for! 
> 
> This is a love story above all, but it's a hard-fought one in a lot of ways, and the sweetness and humor here come part and parcel with reflection and angst. Warnings-wise, there's talk of past substance abuse for both Eliot and an off-screen character, hints of Quentin's struggle with depression (and a passing mention of some suicidal ideation), heaps of remembered childhood trauma, and all that jazz. If you'd like specifics, please feel free to contact me directly — my Tumblr is linked in the footer notes.
> 
> I'm so grateful I had a partner like E ([myselfmysame](https://myselfmysame.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr) for this. As an artist, she was able to capture the mood and feel and spirit of this world so well, and working with her was absolute pleasure. And to my beautiful betas, templeandarche and mjules,: I love you ladies. Thank you for watching my brain.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

FADE IN:

Eliot Waugh lights a cigarette and lies back with a sigh, artfully arranging himself atop the stone retaining wall that borders Nigel Garity's sprawling estate.

Or, more accurately, the fifty feet of stone veneer and MDF that makes up a full-scale section of said wall, built on the massive soundstage where most of the estate exteriors are shot.

"Benedict will shit fake bricks if he sees you smoking in here."

He takes a particularly long pull, blowing smoke rings into the rafters.

"Seems like a skill that could come in handy for his job security." Rolling his head to the right puts him just above eye level with Margo's bored, beautiful face, which is just about his favorite place to be. "Nigel smokes like a house on fire," he says, though his alter-ego doesn't actually try to torch the place until episode eleven. "Allow me this single moment of method self-indulgence."

The look it gets in response says she doesn't buy his shit for a second, which is but one of the infinite reasons why he adores her.

He turns back to the grid of light that runs along the rigging, pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes until their haloes glow like stars. It's a late shoot for the day's whole call sheet, cast and crew alike, but the two of them had come in early and haven't seen the sky since, and he has zero concept of how long they've actually been here. On a self-contained set, time is an illusion.

"It's criminal that I am conscious right now," he groans. "How many more of these must we endure before I can faceplant into the nearest soft surface?"

"This is the last one," she says, and he can hear the frown in her voice, "who should've been here ten goddamn minutes ago."

She shuffles through the sheets she's holding and shoves one into his hand, and he takes one look at the resumé and winces — barebones blocks of boring Times New Roman, printed on truly terrible paper. Though, to its owner's credit, it _is_ the only one that hadn't included a headshot.

He glances at the header and winces again. "Well that wins worst stage name in recent memory," he mutters. "Why the fuck would a Lit kid from Columbia ever want to fetch my coffee?"

"Oh my god, El, he's not a poser, he's _Martin fucking Chatwin_." She waits a beat while he blinks. He can almost hear the eye roll. "The kid from the _Fillory_ movies."

"Bold of you to assume I've actually seen those," he says, scanning the short work history. Once the _Scion_ pilot had been ordered to series, Margo had hinted — in her oh-so-subtle way — that he needed to hire a personal assistant. Now that the show is actively in production and his first few checks have cleared, her hints have become demands, with the occasional threat of dismemberment thrown in for shits and giggles. Hence, spending his pre-call hours interviewing every aspiring whatever who's waiting on tables and a foot in the door.

But this particular resumé doesn't divulge any child star past at all — its spotty work history starts with a stint in an off-campus bookstore.

"So not only does he have time management issues, he's barely spent seven months as anyone's assistant."

Margo snorts. "Which you'd weigh against, what, your wealth of experience having _zero_ assistants?" The resumé rips a little when she snatches it back, but frankly, that copy paper can't get any worse. "And he survived seven months with _Irene McAllister_. You've got to treat that shit like dog years."

She's not wrong. Fucking Irene McAllister and her cutthroat communications empire. Though it makes sense, now, that Margo doesn't seem to mind the tardiness too much — this is the referral from his pretty, prickly publicist, Irene's promising young protégé, and he's fairly sure Bambi's been angling to get into her skirts. He can't tell if the pursuit is out of purely personal interest or her continued crusade to renegotiate his every contract, but knowing Margo, it's some combination of both.

Her phone pings with the sound of new email, and he glances over as she scrolls down the screen, watching her face go full scorched earth in five seconds flat.

"Christ on a crotch rocket," she spits, and there's only one thing it can mean at the moment — that _Angels in America_ revival isn't going to happen for him, not with the games they keep playing with the schedule. But far be it for him to deny his Bambi her daily dose of evisceration. He hadn't christened her The Destroyer for nothing.

She holds up a finger and tucks the phone to her ear, heels clicking as she stomps off in all her glorious fury. Then she ducks behind a set wall and slips out a side door where no one will hear the screams, and he grins in her wake and goes back to his cigarette.

It's fine that the play is a no go. Yeah, it might have been nice to workshop on weekends and head back to New York for hiatus, to follow through on the big dreams of Broadway that had taken him to Tisch in the first place. But he doesn't entirely mind L.A., and his track record with follow through is spotty, at best — he'd only managed to make it a year and change in the program before the pull of independent film had found him — and the best thing he ever could've taken from Tisch is Margo.

Besides, he has the show, now.

Even ensconced here on set, with the smoke and mirrors of Nigel's world staged all around him, something about it doesn't quite seem real. They're three episodes in and counting, and part of him still can't believe that two months of callbacks and chemistry reads and costume trials with wardrobe had landed him _here_ , queer and obscure and still somehow the lead of HBO's splashy new series, in the same golden time slot that had once launched _Game of Thrones_.

So, only a _tad_ terrifying.

Yes, the show has yet to actually air. But the scripts are solid and the characters are compelling and he's in the greatest company of his admittedly short career — the ensemble is a talented mix of character actors and eye candy, Idri is magnetic presence and gravitas personified, and Marina is the most glorious bitch he's seen snarl a line since Margo. And if he can just stay focused on that, all of it, maybe he can forget that the success of this whole thing is riding squarely on his shoulders.

It's a hell of a weight to carry, even with both feet firmly on solid ground. But he's out on a tightrope, twelve stories high, with nary a safety net to speak of.

This is _fine_. It's all perfectly fucking fine.

He takes another long drag, and the smoke shakes on its way out. Honestly, he's too sober to be left alone with his thoughts like this. Bambi should know better by now.

As if on cue, the main entrance opens with a bang and a body comes spilling into the studio. Seems late lit kid has finally decided to grace them with his presence.

Eliot goes up on one elbow to watch the approach, a stumbling blur of brown hair and bad tweed, tangled in the strap of a messenger bag. "Sorry, _shit,_ I'm sorry," the blur is saying, trying to navigate the maze of equipment. It comes to a stop a few feet from the faux wall, and Eliot sits up, swings his legs over the edge, and stares from the resume in his hand to the slightly breathless boy at his feet — frazzled and frowning, with a heavy brow and a gently curved jaw and a wide mouth that curls up at the corners.

A headshot would never do him justice; this is a face that craves a state of perpetual motion.

" _Quentin Coldwater?_ " he says, and though the name is still patently ridiculous, it's altogether perfect for this precious colt of a human.

"Uh huh," Quentin Coldwater says, blinking big brown eyes up at him over an honest-to-god blush, openly gaping as if _Eliot_ is the revelation here.

It's the single most interesting thing that's happened to him this month, maybe longer. And that's coming from someone currently shooting a series that might just make him famous.

If this moment were a movie, it'd be the opening of some wide-eyed coming-of-age tale with this kid as its undisputed star.

He hops down off the wall and saunters slowly forward, takes one last pull before he crushes the cigarette on the cement floor beneath his boot. And he'll have to clean that up before either Benedict or Bambi ever know it was there, but this is the first impression — optics are absolutely everything.

"You're late," he says on the exhale, gaze drifting head to toe and back again, taking in the ill-cut blazer and synthetic sweater beneath, the grown-out Supercuts special that falls into his eyes.

Delightfully, Quentin Coldwater doesn't so much as flinch.

There's a buzz of awareness at the base of his brain, crackling and electric, something he hasn't felt since the moment he met Margo. _And_ _good lord,_ he's tempted to finish, _are you bound to be trouble_.

He smiles a little, instead, extends a hand to his new PA.

"I'm Eliot."

"And that, children, is a _series_ wrap on Eliot Waugh."

Half-hidden behind a playback monitor, Quentin hovers at the edge of video village next to Eliot's empty chair, wishing he could join the wave of applause that erupts. But he can't exactly clap with his hands full, can't whistle worth a damn, and he's never really been a person who whoops, so all he can do is watch while the cast and crew closes in to surround their star in celebration.

Quentin remembers his last day in Fillory, when _The Wandering Dune_ had wrapped principal photography. He'd spent the whole week quietly but increasingly anxious, only to discover on the day that Jane had demanded he have a closed set and a final shot free of fanfare — just one more thing he wishes he could still thank her for. But he's seen his share of last wraps, seen people laugh and cry and dance through showers of champagne and shimmering confetti. He's even seen the Olivier Award-winning asshole who'd played Ember make the moment a de facto acceptance speech, palms pressed into prayer position, while he feigned humility for the same people he'd spent five films verbally abusing.

But he's never seen it in reverse, not until now. Eliot is shaking his head indulgently, smirking into dozens of smiling faces with a hand over his heart — _you're too kind_ , it all telegraphs, _and for good reason, please, do continue_ — before he bends in an honest-to-god _bow_.

Then his head comes back up, and even from here, Quentin can count all the little chinks in the armor — the way he swallows too hard and his eyes shine too bright, the way that hand shakes as he holds it in the air.

"I know you're relieved to finally be rid of me," Eliot says, "so I swear I'll make this quick." The rolling laughter doesn't quite cover the cough that clears his throat, but when he speaks again, the thickness in his voice is almost gone.

"We came in like the proverbial wrecking ball. It's only fitting that we go out with a bang." He gestures vaguely at the modesty robe he's slipped into — which Quentin finds fairly ridiculous, since not only could El do this naked and not bat an eye, he'd probably _prefer_ it, for dramatic effect — and the laughter is louder this time. "The truth is, being this glorious bastard for the last four seasons has been an absolute blast, if not much of a stretch, as character defects go. But being in this _company_ , working day in and day out surrounded by the talent and dedication in this room and beyond… _that_ has been an honor."

Robe or no robe, he suddenly seems stripped bare, face full of nothing but naked gratitude. No one is laughing now, not with the spell Eliot has cast, with the whole of the room holding its collective breath.

"A hell of a lot of doors are wide open today because this show kicked them down. I may have been the face of that, but you are the flesh and blood and beating fucking heart. And while the world may never see its like again, its _legacy_ belongs to you. So take it with you, wherever you go from here, and waltz through those open doors with your heads held high. For now, just… revel in your majesty for one fucking second."

Eliot's eyes sweep across the crowd, and he draws himself up with a big breath, wraps his words in a nod and a wide, slow smile.

"Be regal, miscreants."

The spell doesn't break so much as it _releases_ , settling across the crowd in a rolling wave of reaction — more applause, yes, but bolstered by sniffles and cheers and stray wolf whistles from a few of the grips. Even stoic, striking Faye Queen, on set to supervise the finale she'd so deftly written, seems to be blinking back tears. Quentin watches her reach for Eliot in a graceful blur of gauzy sleeves, grazing her lips across his cheek. Then Idri steps in as she moves away, clapping his hands on Eliot's shoulders and pulling him in tight.

 _Yeah_ , this is going to take a while.

"Well that was super touching." It comes from just behind him, practically at his elbow, in a voice that sets his teeth on edge. "Just out of curiosity, did he get a script for the inevitable post-show special, or was that whole hallmark moment your handiwork?"

Rolling his eyes, Quentin glances over his shoulder to glare at Poppy Kline and her ever-present press pass. He bites back what he really wants to say, though it's hard, with the pride _right there_ , bubbling light and buoyant at the back of his throat. Quentin has spent hours at a time searching for perfect words, and El had just plucked them out of thin air.

Eliot, unscripted.

But this is Poppy, every bit as unpredictable as she is relentless. Answering her is always an art form — FuzzBeat isn't exactly renowned for its journalistic integrity, and he's learned the hard way just how creative she can get with _no comment._

He's still not sure what she has against Eliot, but the fact that anyone could witness what just happened and question his sincerity… well, it's got to be one hell of a grudge.

"Nope, all him," he says, thrilled when it comes out as neutral as he'd hoped. "Though, that almost sounded like you _don't_ actually think he's a terrible actor."

"That'd be a sicker burn from someone who isn't paid to buy into his bullshit."

Quentin clenches his jaw, swallowing the knee-jerk words that had jumped to the tip of his tongue — Eliot pays him for a lot of things, but fielding the press isn't one of them. He can only imagine the story she'd spin if he and all his repressed emotion were to spring to El's defense.

Jesus, Margo would castrate him with her bare hands and wrap his balls in Poppy's byline.

"What are you even doing here?" he says, turning toward her. "Outside of the call sheet, the set's supposed to be locked down to essential personnel only."

"So you standing on the sidelines holding his slippers is _essential_." She presses her lips together. "Got it."

He can practically hear Eliot in his head, words in the key of evisceration — _they're loafers_ , he'd say, _in monogramed Gucci goddamn wool, but honestly, how would you know?_ Regardless, the shot has been fired. His hands itch to set the shoes on the floor, or the chair, or literally anywhere that isn't _hanging from his fucking fingertips_ , but he refuses to give her the satisfaction. Or to bend over anywhere in her general vicinity.

"Just doing my job," he mutters.

Poppy shrugs, undaunted. "And I'm just doing mine."

"Doubtful," Eliot scoffs, suddenly at his left. Quentin just about jumps out of his skin — thank fuck for the lid on the coffee. "I'm almost positive your process involves an altar and some sort of ritual animal sacrifice."

"Only when my subject's the literal spawn of Satan. But props on the dramatic entrance." It's hard to tell what's more disconcerting, the tilt of her head or the tightness of her smile. "Quentin was just —"

"Merrily minding his own fucking business?" Eliot steps solidly to his side, slides an arm around his shoulders to hook his hand in the curve of Quentin's neck, his answering smile razor sharp. "Get your own little lamb, Miss Mary Hack, this one's spoken for. I called dibs on him and everything."

Something in Poppy's eyes sharpens, predatory.

"Funny thing about doing that with actual _people_ ," she says, and smirks. "It only works when they want you to." The long line of Eliot stiffens against his ribs, just for a breath, maybe two, and Poppy blows a kiss at Quentin and spins away. "Toodles!"

Quentin shudders under Eliot's arm, trying to shake his head clear of the cloud of _what the hell just happened_ Poppy always seems to leave in her wake.

"Is it just me, or was there a lot of nursery rhyme conflation going on there?" He looks up at Eliot, shifting the loafers into his hands. "How are you done already? I figured you'd be, like, holding court 'til your coffee got cold."

Nevermind that, as always, El's freshly-brewed French press French roast — two creams, one sugar — is ensconced in an insulated mug with a mag slide lid and will remain pretty close to piping hot for hours. He's made his point.

"I resent the implication that my kingdom would be fictional. Or contain anywhere near this much denim." El pulls in a big breath and swings around to stand in front of him. "Figured you could use the assist. Besides, things were getting a little drafty down under."

He slips the shoes on standing, with a hand on Quentin's arm to steady himself, his face pulling into the particular degree of thoughtful that mostly means he's plotting his revenge.

"Maybe you should start carrying a spray bottle. You could maintain minimum safe distance, at the very least. And if we're _really_ lucky, she might just fucking _melt_."

Quentin snorts out a laugh, shaking his head. "Seriously, what the hell is her issue with you?"

Straightening, Eliot gives him a look he's never seen before, equal parts vexed and amazed, his hand tightening almost imperceptibly around Quentin's arm. Then he blinks, and his face settles back to its post-Poppy place of annoyance and amusement.

"You are unbelievable sometimes."

Quentin blinks back, abruptly the one off balance. "It's… a valid question."

"It's not the _question_ , Q, it's. The way you asked it." His tone is tinged in fond exasperation, as if he fully expects Quentin to understand what he's saying but is utterly unsurprised that he doesn't. It's a little disconcerting, since, after three and a half years, Quentin hopes he speaks fairly fluent Eliot.

But El lets go of his arm and waves it all off, plucking the coffee from Quentin's fingers. "Enough with low-rent Lois Lane, we've wasted enough oxygen on her already."

"Right," Quentin mumbles, still floating in a fog of confusion. Eliot raises both eyebrows, slow and pointed — which absolutely means _earth to Q_ , so maybe that look was an anomaly — and he snaps the fuck out of it and back into Work Mode, digging Eliot's phone out of its designated pocket. " _Right._ Uh, Margo texted twice. Like, a minute apart? So, probably nothing she's ready to strangle you over. I signed for your suit — Heloise has it in wardrobe, in case you wanted to check the break, but if not, we can grab it on the way out. And, _oh_ , I heard back from the florist…" He fumbles with his own phone for a second, thumbing through his inbox for the right email. "Yeah, they were able to get the Queen _and_ Pincushion Proteas you asked for, but not the Black Parrot Tulips, so they want to sub them out with something called Safari Sunset Le— Lu— uh, _Luck_ …?"

"Leucadendron," El supplies, looking up from his unlocked screen. "Also a Protea."

"If you say so. They also suggest adding firespikes and… _kangaroo paws_? These cannot be the names of actual flowers."

Eliot's mouth twitches at each corner. "Q —"

"I'm just saying, is it a floral arrangement or a D&D campaign?" he mutters. El's eyes are dancing over the rim of his cup, and Quentin flushes, fidgeting with the zipper on his hoodie. For whatever reason, Eliot's patience with him has always been sort of boundless, bolstered by sincere interest and genuine amusement and more than a little good-natured teasing. And no matter how miraculous that feels, for someone who's tried the patience of pretty much everyone he's ever known, he's not all that eager to test its limits.

"Sorry. Um, if all of that works for you, then Faye's bouquet is good to go for Saturday. They'll deliver directly to the club, just let me know what time you want it."

" _Quentin_. Take a breath." The noise he makes lands somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, fleeting and forever full of nuance. "Better yet, take a _break_. We're wrapped, the day is young, and I just exorcised an actual demon. Let's bask for a beat, shall we?"

He reaches out to squeeze Quentin's shoulder, smiling absently at Frankie from the camera crew when he slaps a hand on his back as he goes by. Behind them, the rest of the set is a flurry of habitual motion — breaking down equipment, packing up props. But this isn't an end-of-day reset, it's the start of a final teardown, and even Quentin can feel the difference in the air.

 _Fuck_. Work Mode is one thing, but the show is over, like, _for_ _good_ — it's never needed much ADR in post, and even that will just be El in a booth with a couple sound engineers, at best — and he's standing here like an idiot, rambling at Eliot about flowers he can't pronounce.

"That was amazing, you know. What you said." This time, his voice is nowhere near as neutral as it needs to be. But he can't care, not when it's immediately rewarded with one of his favorite faces, the warm, bright surprise that floods Eliot's features. "And I can take care of all this, if you want to, um… There's a lot of people who wanted to talk to you, El, you didn't have to press pause to rescue me."

Eliot shrugs, his hand slipping from the top of Quentin's bicep to the tip of his elbow and leaving a tingling trail of goosebumps behind. And that face melts into something even better, something soft and open and familiar. Something he never shares with the camera.

"Maybe I just wanted to talk to you."

Quentin can't tell what his own face is doing, but whatever it is, he's thrilled that Poppy Kline isn't here to see it.

Eliot smiles, even and entirely unaffected, like he hasn't just casually wrecked him for the rest of the day. Or, you know, life.

"There'll be time for the fond farewells," he says. "For now, I'd settle for some pants."

For a moment, Quentin feels a flash of ill-prepared, irrational panic. One that must show on his face, since Eliot drops his mouth open and draws his brows together in an overblown display of mock outrage.

"Why Quentin, are you saying you _don't_ have a perfectly pressed pair of pants stashed in your back pocket?" He sniffs and glances away, haughty and appalled in profile. "Honestly, I don't even know what I'm paying you for."

Unclenching, Quentin's lips twist against a smile. The window of humor won't hold, not once Eliot sits still long enough, but he'll go with it for however long it lasts. "It's kind of an unreasonable expectation," he says. "I mean, have you ever asked anyone for anything pants-related that involved putting them _on_?"

El cocks his head, thoughtful. "Fair," he says, and sighs. "Come along, then. To the Batcave."

Quentin snickers. "Nerd."

Eliot hums. "And whose fault, pray tell, would that be?"

His hand moves down to circle Quentin's wrist, to tug him along as he steps forward, and Quentin has just enough time to reach out with his other hand and snatch the back of the folding chair from its frame.

El hasn't actually said anything about wanting to take it, but this goes beyond being part of the job. This is three and a half years of knowing Eliot, who will wake up one day weeks from now and realize he'd left it behind, this little piece of the spot saved and marked just for him. Who will try to brush it off until it's all he can think about, and he texts Quentin at whatever he deems a decent hour with a careful, casual _Hey, you didn't happen to grab the back of my chair by any chance, did you?_

It's happened a handful of times before, with things like this, starting with the image they'd used to reserve El's seat at the 2016 Emmys. His seat filler had set it in the next chair over during the first commercial break, and Audra McDonald had come back from the bathroom and hadn't noticed it there until she was settled again. She'd pulled the picture out from underneath her gown, handed it back to him with a smile and an _Oh my god, I sat on your face_ , and Eliot, as he tells it, had screamed — silently, but from the depths of his very soul — for the remainder of the comedy awards block.

 _That was the moment, Q,_ he'd said, only half joking. _That was the moment I knew I'd made it._

He'd asked, offhand, whether Quentin thought there was a chance he could get his hands on that picture, and Quentin could only cringe and say _I'm pretty sure they just toss them, but let me make some calls_ , knowing there probably wasn't a snowball's chance in hell. And Eliot had waved it off when he'd come back empty-handed — _he's_ the one who'd overcompensated after, who had read disappointment into El's every word for weeks, until Eliot had finally sat him down with a bottle of wine and unwound him before he snapped. _How the hell could this be on you, Quentin, you weren't even_ there _. Honestly, it's fine. Yes, she's a legend, and I worship the very tap shoes she walks on, but she's hardly the last person who will ever sit on my face._

So he folds the fabric one-handed along the line of Eliot's name, flips the whole thing in half again, and shoves it into the front pocket of his bag. Because these are the things he does now. This way, when that text comes in, Quentin can wait a respectable few minutes, respond with an equally casual _I did, actually, it's in the box of shit from set you still haven't unpacked_ , and all will be well with the world.

They make their way out of the studio and across to the trailer lot, where he stops at the bottom of the steps, and Eliot's scaled all three and has a hand on the door before he realizes he's at the end of his leash.

"I'm sorry," he says, "were you waiting for a formal invitation?"

El is a little too tall for easy eye contact to begin with, but now Quentin has to crane his head back to manage. "No, I just figured…" There's a brutally honest end to that sentence that basically boils down to thinking that Eliot might need a moment, after everything, but it sounds bad enough in his head. "You know," he says instead, "that you'd want a shower."

It's honest enough. Loafers aside, El is still wearing nothing but a short robe and a cock sock, and he's always refused to let his own clothes anywhere near the rose-scented glycerin spray the show used to mimic sex sweat.

"I can shower at the house," El says, shaking his head. "I'm craving the kind of water pressure this stall just can't handle, and I couldn't help but notice my change of clothes involves that paisley shirt I kind of hate. So, in we go, Boy Wonder."

The shirt had been strategic, since he hadn't wanted Eliot to associate the end of all this with something he actually enjoyed wearing, but —

"Wait, am I _Robin_ in this scenario?"

To Eliot's credit, his immediate reaction doesn't seem to be _Well you sure as hell aren't Batman._

"As opposed to…"

Quentin shrugs, eyebrows up. "Alfred?"

Laughter bubbles out of Eliot, sharp and surprised but somehow a world away from cruel. "You want to be Alfred," he says, and drops his chin to his chest. "Of course you do."

" _Alfred_ ," Quentin sighs, "not only raised and trained a human superhero, he's ex-Intelligence and Special Forces, he's the team medic and tech support all rolled into one, and he's trusted with the secret identities of the _entire Justice League_ , okay, the guy is more than just Bruce Wayne's manservant."

El holds up both hands in surrender. "I stand corrected."

"I mean, which Robin would I even _be_?"

Eliot blinks. "Is there not just the one?"

"Are you…" Quentin gasps, gaping. " _Seriously?_ "

"Okay, you're giving my geek card way too much credit here." El's face pulls into a sort of careful indulgence, which is as close as he ever gets to completely snapping. "You can be whichever hero you want, Quentin. But can you do it while we're packing, and after I've _put on some goddamn pants_?"

"Oh, um," Quentin stammers, because the _packing_ part reminds him about the thing he probably should have mentioned, instead of standing here defending the honor of Batman's butler. "Actually —"

But Eliot has already opened the door and ducked inside, and Quentin scrambles up the steps after him, nearly colliding with his back where he's stopped in his tracks.

" _Yeah_ , about that."

Quentin's never really seen the trailer like this. The show had been well underway when he'd gotten the job, and the first time he'd ever set foot in here, it had already become El's private cocoon — strewn with his vinyl and vintage, spun out of velvet and silk — and evolved from all the things that looked and felt like the star he was meant to be.

The walls are still sueded in a sooty, smoky blue, the air still smells like dark berries and bergamot, and the handpicked hardware and fixtures are still in place, sconces and pulls in unlacquered brass. But it's a beautiful shell, now, with all its softness stripped and all the artwork gone, with everything that's actually Eliot packed away. All that's left are a few furniture pieces El had brought in every season like clockwork, and the organized chaos of the mixed media vignette tacked to every edge of the vanity mirror.

"I finished up while you were waiting for the reset," he says, stepping around to come up on Eliot's right. "Todd was gonna drop it all off, so it'll be waiting for you back at the house. And there's a crew coming to take the bigger stuff back to storage."

He watches Eliot's eyes wander, lingering on the spot where his burlwood bar cart sits empty, and shoves his hair behind his ears just to keep his fingers from fidgeting.

"Sorry," he mumbles, "I thought…"

"Q, it's fine." Eliot turns his chin to his shoulder to look at him with soft eyes and a softer smile. "I'd be lying if I said I _hadn't_ laid down last night with visions of a move-out montage dancing through my head, but real talk — you probably saved me from KonMari-ing my way into the wee hours, trying to decide which wireless charger brings me the most joy."

"The one by the sofa."

"It was just _so easy to reach_."

They snicker together in two-part harmony, and the sound of it seems to echo in the nearly-empty space. Then Eliot bumps his arm against Quentin's and sets down his coffee to make his way toward the little bedroom in the back.

Quentin shrugs the strap of his bag over his head and off his shoulder and slides it to the floor. The sofa is strangely unwelcoming without its Turkish throw and plethora of pillows, and the buttery-soft leather chair at the vanity — a six a.m. Rose Bowl score, worth every second of lost sleep just to watch Eliot's eyes light up — is silently reserved for one ass alone, so he folds himself onto the kitchenette's granite countertop, picking at a stray thread on the seam of one calf until he hears the water stop running in the bathroom.

"What's the plan for tomorrow?" he calls.

"You're planting your ass at home to spend some quality time with your computer, that's what."

"Shame _and_ deflection," he says flatly. "Impressive."

Eliot snorts. "I'm multitasking."

"You know what I meant. It's your first free Friday in like a _year_. And since your Marie Kondo all-nighter is off the table… What's the plan?"

"Doesn't the beauty of a hard-won day off lie in not _having_ a plan?" El mutters, sort of muffled, surrounded by the sound of rustling fabric. "Maybe some takeout, some bad TV. I think Bambi's sending over a script. I have no fucking clue, Quentin, I hadn't really thought beyond the part where I sleep past the ass crack of dawn." There's a pause, then a groan of disgust that's crystal clear. "Scratch that. Clearly the plan is to get a goddamn _haircut_."

Quentin nods, already scrolling through his contacts — El has been happy with the stylists on the show, but he only lets one person anywhere near his head with scissors. "Let me check with Natasha, see what time she can come out."

" _Or,_ " El says, stopping him cold, "you could let _me_ make a simple phone call like a fully functioning adult." He ducks his head around the doorframe with a pointed stare, suddenly serious, and… _oh_ , it's not about Natasha. "I mean it, Q. You'll be off the clock, so fucking act like it. Get some writing in. Get some _rest_. Get shit done that is not _my_ shit. You think that script is just gonna finish itself?"

Looking down at his lap, Quentin winds the thread around the tip of one finger, watches the skin slowly lose its color.

"Nope," he says, and swallows. "Not that one."

He glances up when Eliot emerges, finally in pants, the paisley shirt rolled at the sleeves and open to the third button. El wheels the small bag Quentin had packed behind him with one hand, carries the discarded modesty robe in the other, and Quentin reaches out to trade it for a fresh face towel and a quick fix kit — micellar water for the makeup, moisturizer for the beard burn.

Eliot's expression melts into a strange mixture of fond and frustrated. "Listen," he says, "as much as I live for your attention to literally every detail — and that includes the shirt selection, by the way, I fully intend to burn this thing without a single shred of guilt — I _swear_ I will survive without you watching my brain for one weekend."

Quentin thinks of the forgotten scrap of canvas folded in the front of his bag, of the subconscious reason Eliot hates said shirt in the first place, and finds that a little hard to believe.

"We're up to the whole _weekend_ now?" he asks, sidestepping that issue entirely. "I thought we were just talking tomorrow."

"I've got nothing going on but the wrap party on Saturday. And unless you're reconsidering the invitation to attend as an actual _guest_ —" El spreads his arms with a shrug, as if to say _well, there you go_ , because Quentin can feel the face he'd made, so they both know the answer to that.

"And Sunday?"

Eliot flattens a hand to his base of his throat, as scandalized as his considerable acting skills can manage. "Sunday is _the lord's day_ , Quentin."

Quentin nods, trying not to choke on the laughter he beats back. "Says the star of a Sunday night show that just shot a scene with its protagonist detailing all the ways he destroyed his estranged father's marriage, title, and fortune in the throes of an all-out _orgy_."

"I simply smile and fake fuck who they tell me, Q, I don't set the schedule."

The laughter spills out of him then, leaving room in his chest for everything else to fill. Beyond the looming three-day weekend alone, and the lingering fear that El plain might not need him anymore… it's the last time they'll ever do this here.

He hadn't let himself think about it before, while he packed up the barware and pulled frames off the walls, full of Fillmore posters and black and white photos and charcoal sketches of human figure studies. He does now, the thought sobering and — watching Eliot move over to the vanity and set the bottles and towel on top — seemingly contagious.

The drawers have all been emptied, but the mirror is bordered in memories. Ticket stubs from _Hadestown_ and _Dear Evan Hansen_ and _Hamilton_ at The Public. Dried peony petals from a glittering bouquet he'd gotten from Gaga the week after he'd won his last Golden Globe. Pictures of cast and crew and his beloved Bambi, even a few that feature Quentin's face. And a souvenir from the only show press he'd ever seemed to give a shit about: a carefully-removed cover of _Out_ , Eliot a shadowed silhouette at its center, beneath screaming yellow caps splashed across the page that spell out the word _SPECTACULAR_.

They'd pulled it from one of Eliot's descriptions of the show, but it fit the man himself pretty damn well.

Quentin had left an empty box at the vanity earlier, open on the chair, with sleeves for the pictures and envelopes for the papers and even a little lidded container for the flowers. But he hadn't touched any of it. Hadn't wanted Eliot to walk into this trailer for the last time and see no evidence that he'd ever been here at all.

"A little extra there, Alfred, don't you think?" Eliot says, but his eyes are softly grateful at the edges.

Quentin shrugs. "It's for you," he answers, " _a little extra_ is pretty much the baseline."

It gets the chuckle he'd hoped for, before El starts plucking pictures from the mirror and slotting them away. He works in silence — methodically pulling apart in minutes what had taken four years to put together — and _this_ is the reason Quentin had left the mirror memorabilia as it was. So Eliot could have this quiet moment to process and decompress, to dismantle everything he'd painstakingly built.

He's getting down to the last of it, closing the lid on the container of flower petals, when he finally speaks again. "Well, I am officially unemployed." He sets the container inside the box and moves the whole thing to the top of the vanity. "What's the grace period on _where are they now_ clickbait?"

"You say that like there isn't more than one 'Whatever Happened to Quentin Coldwater?' writeup floating around Fuzzbeat."

Eliot snorts. "You were a thousand-dollar Jeopardy answer last month," he drawls, wry. "But I appreciate the attempt to join me in the depths of imminent irrelevance."

There's nothing left now but the _Out_ cover — he peels it away with a fragile sort of reverence, holds it in between the pads of his fingertips.

"This was good." And he's looking at the glossy page in his hands, at the masthead and the caption and the shadow of his own profile, but he means so much more than a story in a magazine. "It was really good."

Quentin thinks of El's earlier speech, a beautiful swan song from someone still convinced he's the ugly duckling. It's ridiculous, really, and more than a little tragic — with all the faith Eliot has in everyone who's ever had a hand in the show, he's spared so little for himself.

"It's still good," he says. Easy and even, to spare them both. "But you sort of brought the _spectacular_ with you, so. Pack it up, so you can bring it somewhere else."

El looks up from the cover and locks eyes with him, warm and wistful and full of feeling, and for a moment, Quentin can't quite remember how to breathe. And _fuck_ , he used to be so good about separating the space where Eliot exists as his employer from the space where Eliot lives as his friend, but these days he spends most of his time trapped in the in-between, where the roles get fuzzy and the line fades away, and has to force himself back to one side or the other.

This time, Eliot does it for him, snorting around a smile and slipping the cover into an envelope.

He seals the flap and slips the envelope into the box, puts a lid on it all. Then he steps forward, reaching out to palm Quentin's knee in silent thanks, and grabs his coffee from the counter.

"Yeah," he says, "okay." He fades back a few steps, settles into the safari chair, and toasts his cup in Quentin's direction. "Onward, to glory. By which I mean, you are totally carrying that box."

"I'm telling you, El, we play this right and you skip directly to the short list."

Eliot tosses his keys on the kitchen island and tugs at the knot of his tie, Margo's voice sharp in his ear — still operating at a ten despite the fact that it's well after midnight.

She's technically been at it since she'd texted him on set — _I have something_ , the first one had read, followed quickly by _And if this shit pans out, prepare to worship the ground I fucking walk on_. He'd sent back the requisite fawning — _Come now, Bambi, when have I not?_ — but hadn't really gotten his hopes up, partially stuck in his own head and mostly distracted by Quentin's adorable floral vexation.

"Right," he replies, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "The top of which reads _Liam fucking Hemsworth_."

"What the fuck can _Baby Thor_ bring to the table that you can't?"

Eliot snorts. "An eight pack and an accent?"

And a built-in box office draw no one knows if Eliot can possibly deliver, but that part's pretty much a given.

"You read the script. The heavy lifting is _dramatic_ , all the abs in the world won't mean shit without the chops. Nobody in the mix could play this part the way you could."

The words flood him with warmth, so sudden he shivers in the cool air of the open kitchen.

"I'll just pretend you weren't implying that I have zero abs to offer," he says, its dryness too brittle for her not to notice. "Besides, you're my manager. Isn't fawning and flattery basically the fine print of your contract?"

" _Please_." He nearly scoffs right along with her — nickname notwithstanding, fawning isn't in her wheelhouse. Margo's never met a carrot she couldn't treat like a stick, and convince whatever poor soul she's mounted to be grateful for the flogging. "I could keep my mouth shut for the rest of your career and still take my twelve percent."

"In an industry, it should be noted, where the standard take is _ten_."

"And if I was a standard bitch," she purrs, "that might actually work for me. You pay me to make shit happen, baby, not to blow smoke up your ass. _That_ was your best fucking friend talking, the one who's been your biggest fan since you were shooting indie trash on some dick's cell phone. And as your friend, that's as fawning as I get without a goddamn gun to my head, so you can quit fishing for compliments."

For a moment, the combination of her voice and his laughter lightens the darkness pressing at his eyes — she's the best kind of extra, the way she's the best kind of everything, and he loves her madly, padded two percent be damned.

"Okay," she sighs, that patented mix of exhilarated and exhausted she does so well. "I'm home, it's late, and I need a bottle of wine and a long bath in the company of something that vibrates. But tomorrow the ball really gets rolling, so get your balls on board."

The call cuts out sans formal goodbye, which is fairly standard, for them. He takes out his earbuds and sets them next to his keys, shaking his head — once Bambi's set a ball in motion, god help anyone in its path.

The thing is… she definitely does _have something_.

 _Chimera_ began as a gritty graphic novel about an attorney named Donavan Cain, who spends half his unbillable hours saving lives as an indestructible superhero and the other half taking them as the god-level monster who shares his skin — a monster that is, as fate would have it, the very source of his power. And the screen adaptation, with its meaty dream of a script and its mercurial dick of a director, has officially been greenlit.

All conjecture aside, it's a dream project. _His_ dream project, to be perfectly honest.

The breakdowns won't go wide until Tuesday, but Margo had the script in his hands before breakfast Friday morning — so much for sleeping in — and is already working overtime and then some to get his name in the running, _Scion_ 's wrap party included.

Leave it to Bambi to spend the night networking when there's booze and oblivion to be had.

Not that Eliot had hit it all that hard, either. While Margo had schmoozed the network exec whose wife is likely casting _Chimera_ , he'd mostly mingled. Used the same smoked rum Negroni to clink along with every tipsy toast that had been given, and heeded the overwhelming urge to milk every minute he had left with his _Scion_ company — basking in the aura of Faye's regal energy, trading barbs with Marina at peak bitch brilliance. At one point he'd even been content with the bittersweet ramblings of Benedict from set dec.

He'd wanted a parting shot of Idri's wit and wisdom, and gotten shrewd insight, instead. _You look unmoored_ , he'd said, sipping slowly at his scotch. _You do realize the show won't cease to be great just because it's over_. Eliot had refrained from pointing out that it wasn't the show he was worried about, but the man always has been a perceptive bastard. _Eliot, you can wave away your hand in this all you want to_ , Idri had rumbled, his smile soft and knowing, _but_ _remember what Shakespeare said about greatness._ And Eliot had hummed, his own glass nearly empty, and gone for the easy deflection of humor. _As much as I do enjoy having things thrust upon me_ , he'd said, _I get the feeling you don't mean it in the fun way._

But it had been a good night — being with everyone for one last blowout, raising a glass to the thing they'd built together. Feeling like a part of something bigger than himself.

 _It's still good_.

The words come back to him in Quentin's voice — empathetic, and slightly admonishing, for all that it tried to be even. For a moment, it's almost as if Q is standing here with him, instead of hunched over a notebook or his laptop in the cozy chaos of his little storybook Spanish cottage in Silver Lake. Quentin, who'd painstakingly packed up everything from Eliot's trailer but the things that meant the most, who'd weathered the wrath of Poppy fucking Kline and wondered why the hell she had it in for Eliot, not what the hell Eliot had ever done to her.

Who'd probably be here right now, in one of his late-night workaholic bursts of energy, had he not been categorically banned from working this weekend for anyone but himself.

Eliot glances around at the beautiful emptiness of his house, with its quartz counters and concrete floors and beachfront back wall that's one great expanse of glass. An honest-to-god Malibu Dreamhouse. It's a joke he'd never bothered to make out loud — too easy, sure, but maybe a hair too tough to examine — until Quentin had wrapped up a brand new Barbie and given it to him as a housewarming gift. And isn't that a hell of a misnomer. His realtor had sold the place as _quintessential new Hollywood_ — and damn, does it look the part — but it's never been _warm_ , not the way it should be, not even with the AC off and the windows thrown wide. There's nothing natural in it, in the _bones_ of it, to balance all the sleek, shiny manmade.

 _It looks like a magazine spread in here_ , Quentin had muttered, and posed her on a shelf in the pantry, plastic legs bent over the edge. _It needs to be more like you. Kind of flawless on the surface, but then, you know… you open a door and find something inside that you'd never expect._

The place still looks like a show house, like he lives on a set. Like Benedict and his team had come in to stage it for filming, every surface perfectly styled, every pillow perfectly arranged. Not a single thing out of place, except a box on a stool at the island and a doll on a shelf behind a door.

And Eliot himself, the only thing alive in here.

He half-contemplates the string of innuendo and eggplant emojis he'd gotten tonight from half his last hookup rotation —Javier, Guillermo, RogerRonaldRaymond with the unfortunate TMJ — and fishes his phone from his pocket to tap out a text.

The second guessing starts as soon as he hits send, because one of these days the response will be _for fuck's sake, Eliot, can I get five consecutive minutes that aren't about you?_ — that is, if he receives one at all — but the phone pings back before the real regret sets in, vibrating solidly in his hand.

On the screen, the reply is just an image: a better-than-decent bottle of Shiraz set on a stretch of familiar tabletop, next to a pile of disjointed puzzle pieces, the fuzzy glow of a frozen fire lit behind. A digital still life, waiting to paint him in.

Grinning a bit despite himself, he grabs his keys from the counter, plucks a parchment-wrapped package from the console in the entryway, and heads back out the door.

Quentin is still fighting with a setup — _fuck_ , he hates transitions — when Eliot lets himself in.

He locks up behind him, the way he's done a thousand times before, and settles, still suited, on the sofa across from Quentin's chair, where he'll undoubtedly remain silent for as long as there's still typing. This is the first act of their script, the cold open, and Eliot is always waiting for his cue.

Wrapping up an action beat he knows he'll only change later, Quentin hits save for the last time tonight. "You know," he says, "for most people, a 'you up?' text right around this time tends to be code for something else."

"Oh, Q," El scoffs. "As if I would ever stoop to something so basic."

Quentin closes his laptop and sets it aside, eyes finding Eliot where he's sprawled across the sofa, looking every inch as if it's where he belongs — which may be because he'd helped pick out the furniture, and all the paint colors, and practically rearranged the kitchen to suit his own cooking preferences. Quentin had lodged a halfhearted objection about the latter, once upon a time, and Eliot had sighed and given him that look that said the _Oh, Quentin_ without words. _The day you use that kitchen for more than microwave quesadillas and mugs of shitty cereal, you can decide which drawer the lemon zester lives in._ Quentin had blinked, feeling a bit like the helpless baby bird El clearly thought he was talking to. _I have a lemon zester?_ he'd asked, as if he even knew what the hell that was, and Eliot had just smiled and patted his cheek.

Maybe it's strange, and not super healthy, for your boss to have his own key. But it had felt like the thing to do, given that he has a key to Eliot's place. And the truth is, Quentin's been here for almost two years, and he never feels more at home in his own house as he does when Eliot is in it. Which is… kind of a lot, to tell the truth. Once or twice week, on average, more when he's not working.

It's also kind of a chicken and egg situation — Quentin can't decide whether it's the cause or the effect.

The wine has been open and breathing since he sent the picture back, and Eliot scoots forward in his seat, grabs the bottle in one hand and the stems of both glasses in the other, and half-fills each with a flourish. Natasha had clearly found the time to come by — Nigel's near chin-length waves, wild and untamed, have been chopped to glossy curls that graze El's cheekbones and taper down the nape of his neck, an Eliot he hasn't seen since season three.

Stretching an arm out over the coffee table, Quentin takes the glass Eliot extends.

"So… how was it?"

"Festive," Eliot says, breezy. But his first sip of Shiraz is thoughtful, as is his profile when he turns toward the hearth. "I don't know. Final."

"In a… night of celebration and closure kind of way," Quentin says, "or a throw yourself onto the fire kind of way?"

El chuckles, low and lyrical, and brings his attention back. "In a healthy happy medium kind of way," he sighs. "I'm good, Quentin. And you're awfully thirsty for sordid details, for someone who spent the night holed up at home like a hermit when he could've been —"

"Hiding in a corner of The Key Club like a hermit?" Quentin cuts in. "Yeah, I can see how that would've been totally different."

"Touché. I'm just saying… you were missed tonight, Q. People missed you. Some more than others."

He tips his glass with a little nod, and Quentin feels a tremor spark up his spine, spread across his shoulders and down his arms to shimmer soft and bright in his fingertips. Eliot just… _says things_ like that, easily, earnestly, _all the goddamn time_ , like the effect they might have has never once occurred to him. And every time, Quentin just sits there, breathless and overwhelmed and quietly destroyed, until Eliot moves on, as if nothing has happened.

El shifts focus right on schedule, leaning over to reach into the jumbled pile of puzzle pieces. He picks one up to turn over in his fingers, squinting at the tabletop in lazy concentration. "I hope your absence paid off, at least. How goes the grand finale?"

Quentin blows out a breath, lightheaded. "Less than grand. It's not a block, exactly, but…"

He slides to the floor between the table and the chair and grabs a little jigsaw piece of his own. They've been working on this thing almost as long as he's had the house, a few slowly placed shapes at a time. And much like the show, it's almost done now, so much closer to the finished image on the front of the box — a rainbow painted in rows of solid pixels — than the random heap of round edges and hollows it had been when they first started.

He can't remember _why_ they'd actually started the puzzle, but this has become its whole point — to have a thousand piece buffer between them, something to occupy their hands while they blow through bottles of wine and tell each other things they don't seem to talk about with anyone else.

"It's… _stalled_ , I guess. I just, I don't know how it's gonna end."

"I assume you've already tried the standard _happily ever after_."

"Yeah, no," Quentin mumbles, making a face. "I don't really, um… _believe_ in happy endings?"

"That's because you haven't met the right masseuse," Eliot answers, bone dry. Then he looks up, his hand still poised above the table and where he's just put his cardboard piece in place. "Wait, are you — you're serious. What do you mean, you _don't believe_ in happy endings, Quentin? Are you aware that you're the one writing the story?"

"I'm aware. Kind of painfully, at this point. But the golden rule is to write what you know, right?"

It's kind of ridiculous reasoning, since the screenplay he's currently writing involves a group of friends trying to survive at a mysterious grad school for literal _magicians_ , but that's more premise than moral. Than _meaning_.

Quentin studies the shape of the piece in his hand, trying to find a place for it among the puzzle's abstract array of multicolored squares, and waits for Eliot to say something clever, to smoothly lob the ball back to his side of the court. But when he looks up, Eliot is looking back, eyebrows pulled together, tongue trapped between his teeth.

"Q," he says, careful but firm, his eyes almost painfully kind, "how can that rule ever apply? You don't know how you're gonna end, either."

There's a lump in Quentin's throat that doesn't wash away with the wine, aching at the reminder that that statement hasn't always been true. That Eliot knows it hasn't, and made everything in the words, in his voice and his expression and his _presence_ , an echo of something else he'd told Quentin once, the year that Father's Day had fallen on the anniversary of Jane's death. _You are not alone, here._

Jesus, existing around Eliot had been so much easier back when the most attractive thing about him was his face.

"Speaking of." El picks up the bottle and tops off both their glasses, then pauses at the breath Quentin pulls in, glancing up pointedly. " _Writing_ , that is. Speaking of writing."

He reaches behind him to toss something into the space between table and body, then sits back to sip his wine. The little package lands solidly in Quentin's lap, its shape one he knows well by now.

Years ago, when they'd had their first session of wine and oversharing — accidental, back then, and what seems like immediately after the day they first met — Quentin had fallen into the focus of Eliot's eyes and rambled out all of his big writing dreams. That he used to get too lost in his own brain, and used fiction like Fillory to ground himself. That he'd found the only thing that quiets it for a while is to let himself get lost, to let it spin whatever wild tales it wanted and trap it all down on paper. That it's the reason why he has his bag with him at all times, with a good pen and a book of blank pages. _Telling stories_ _is just… how I make the world make sense_.

Eliot had asked — out of genuine curiosity — why he'd zeroed in on screenplays when it sounded as if he'd be happy writing high fantasy, and Quentin had told him the truth. Not only that working within the structure of scripts kept it all from spiraling, but that the idea of watching the things his broken brain had dreamed up brought to actual life, with sets and costumes and incredible performers saying words he'd put in their mouths, might be the closest he ever got to real magic… and might make him feel like the part of his brain where that story had lived could finally feel like it was whole.

He'd spent the next few days working with his head down and his mouth shut, quietly mortified and more than a little worried about the future of his employment, until, out of nowhere, Eliot had handed him a rectangle wrapped in parchment. _It's nothing,_ he'd said, _I just saw it and thought…_ Then he'd shrugged and slipped his hands in his pockets and half-watched as Quentin opened it — a hand-bound journal in soft saddle leather, with a Faulkner quote embossed in its cover.

_If a story is in you, it has to come out._

They hadn't talked about it. Have never talked about it. But Quentin had quietly retired his random moleskins and composition books, and every time he comes close to filling a journal, El unceremoniously brings him another. The last one is about fifteen pages from full, now — Eliot's timing with them is honestly uncanny — and stamped with the longest inscription yet. _But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think_. Quentin had known without checking. _Byron?_ he'd asked anyway, and watched Eliot smirk. _Naturally. A token, but make it gay._

When he opens this package, the sixth one so far, the words are Eleanor Roosevelt's — _The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams_ — and ping so hard against everything swirling around in his head that, for a rare moment, Quentin has no words of his own.

He manages a nod and a vague mumble of thanks, though Eliot seems to be preoccupied with placing his puzzle piece, squinting at the subtle shift of purple tones already in place. Quentin sets the journal aside, reaching kind of desperately for the rest of his wine and any subtle subject change he can manage.

"So," he says, " _Chimera._ "

El just raises an eyebrow, which is the first clue that the switch hadn't been as subtle as he'd hoped.

"Sounds like somebody had a Margo-shaped distraction," he says, shaking his head. "For shame, Coldwater, for shame."

Quentin can feel the flush in his cheeks, ducks his head to study the puzzle as cover. "She may have blind copied me on the script." He chews on his lip for a moment, risking a glance up to gauge the reaction. "Which is… kind of incredible."

Eliot hums, swirling what's left of the wine in his glass. "Is that your professional opinion?"

What could have been catty coming from anyone else, from him sounds unmistakably sincere. It's just not the path Quentin needs to go down, this one that's marked and well-lit, as opposed to the overgrown one littered with landmines. With Eliot, those paths are always fraught with peril, but can lead to such beautiful places in the end.

"Do you really want to know," Quentin ventures, treading lightly, "or are you just trying to distract me into rambling in fanboy mode until I forget what we were talking about in the first place?"

It's rewarded with one of El's frame-by-frame faces, charmed and confounded and caught all at once, before his features settle on unabashedly shameless.

"How could I resist, when you do it so _well_?" He flashes a quicksilver smile, brilliant and blinding, and Quentin braces for the carefully crafted blasé to come. "The script doesn't suck, as comic book movies go. And yeah, it'd be nice to finally do a film with a budget bigger than some also-ran's Amex limit. But let's not get ahead of ourselves."

Quentin's hands twitch against the overwhelming urge to chime in with _Technically, it's a graphic novel_. He shoves his hair behind one ear and presses his mouth together — this is the crossroads, where the best thing he can do is stop and wait for a sign.

He holds his tongue and his breath as Eliot taps the edge of his puzzle piece on the table. With its round tab along the top and mirrored notches cut out of both sides, it looks a little like a person, and he's not trying to make it fit at all anymore.

"Honestly, I'm not even sure I can pull it off. And despite the valiant effort Margo's made already, I think the studio may share the sentiment." His eyes flick to Quentin's face, his smile tight-lipped now, and tremulous at the edges. "I don't exactly scream _superhero_ , Q."

"Pretty sure that's not one of his abilities, anyway."

It slips out on its own, but makes the smile something more solid, and makes something ping painfully in the center of Quentin's chest. For all that his brain betrays him, sometimes, he mostly knows where his strengths lie — he'd had a small but fierce army, Jane and Julia and his dad, who'd always made sure of that. El has Margo — the smallest, and the absolute fiercest — but maybe the nine years he's known her can't quite cancel out the eighteen years that came before.

And Quentin. He has Quentin.

Who honestly can't imagine being as talented as Eliot is, and on the other side of the coin, never able to trust that at all.

He takes a deep breath, and another small step forward.

"Look, it's not like we're talking about your average tentpole popcorn flick starring some guy in custom spandex and a cape. It's not a comic book movie, El, it's… a _morality play_. It's this fascinating exploration of, like, the nature of good and evil and all the morally grey in-between. Cain might have superpowers, yeah, but he's also basically just a man with immortal DID who spends every moment trying to atone for the part of himself that he hates. He's the hero _and_ the villain. And something like that? It's gonna challenge everything people think about superhero films, and spit in the face of every cliché."

Eliot chuckles, but he's looking into the dregs of his glass. "And here I thought we _weren't_ waxing poetic about the script."

"It's not about the script," Quentin says, shaking his head. "It's about you. Because everything that makes this script special, El, everything I just fanboy blurted in, like, one continuous breath… all of that, you can do in your sleep, with your hands tied behind your back."

El makes a face of exaggerated interest. "Kinky."

"Conjecture. But it's true. Breathing complex characters to life… that's _your_ superpower. You may not believe that, but I do. Margo sure as hell does. And so does the studio, or you wouldn't be up for this part to begin with."

There's a moment, here at the end of the road less traveled, when Quentin can't tell whether or not he's made it through. Then Eliot's eyes come up to catch his, warm and wet, flickering gold in the firelight, and it feels like stepping out of the woods and into the sun.

It comes with a rush that makes him loopy and lightheaded, but also makes him want to be brave. Want to bask in the charged breath between them, and the light in El's eyes, and the things he still has to say.

But after all the words — his, and Eliot's, and Eleanor fucking Roosevelt's — he can't find the right ones for this.

Eliot pours more wine for them both, polishing off the bottle and clinking their glasses together, and the moment is gone.

"The spandex is obviously a nonstarter," he says, "but I would absolutely kill in a cape."

The patio at Free Trader Beowolf is always packed with people who want to be seen — by the paparazzi and the public alike — which is precisely why Eliot hates it here.

He'd reminded Margo as much this morning. _Planned appearances I get_ , _strategic sightings I can tolerate. But why the hell would I ever sit in full fucking sun just so people can watch me eat?_ And she'd sympathized, and kissed him sweetly, and dragged him along, anyway. _Everyone knows that the show's done filming, El. I need you out there and thriving and plastered on every Fuzzbeat page possible, so nobody thinks you crawled in a hole to die._

Now here he is, spending a perfectly good Wednesday afternoon at a wrought-iron table without so much as an umbrella, trying to ignore the not-so-subtle glances from two guys on some CW show and the glint of telephoto glass through the gate.

He'd be miserable, honestly, if he weren't so aware that his agent hated being here _so much more_.

Henry Fogg has long preferred to take his meetings at The Library, a members-only gentleman's lounge done in leather booths and wood paneled walls and the ambient lighting of the functionally alcoholic. There's something truly delightful about sitting across from him here, watching him shift in his slightly wobbly chair and scowl behind his sunglasses, that makes Eliot feel like the choice of venue was almost worth it. He likes the man well enough, he really does. It's just nice to see him squirm for a change.

That his agent extraordinaire only does liquid lunches is an unexpected boon — awful ambiance aside, the actual _food_ here is questionable at best.

Henry takes a sip of his single malt neat and folds his hands on the tabletop. "The short story is, Mayakovsky likes you for Cain," he says. "And the studio does not disagree. In theory."

Eliot blinks back his shock before it can show on his face — he's had exactly one run-in with Mischa Mayakovsky, film's favorite foreign visionary, who'd called him a pretty smokescreen and left his empty vodka rocks glass in Eliot's hand when he'd walked away.

He gives Henry a subtly vexed smile, instead. "Meaning they don't like me in practice? Because if the long story is that they're looking for an actor who's literally possessed, casting may need to take a Tom Cruise turn."

"Meaning, generally-speaking, they have some lingering concerns."

"So, _specifically_ -speaking," Eliot scoffs, "I suck too much cock to be anybody's idea of a superhero."

"Not as such, no," Henry sighs, his voice low and long-suffering, "but you do snort too much _cocaine_."

There's a beat of absolute silence that Eliot almost fills with incredulous laughter — he hasn't done coke since late season one, when he'd figured out that it rendered him incapable of multitasking pesky little things like remembering his lines and hitting his marks and remaining more-or-less upright.

But Fogg's face is stony, and he can feel Margo's foot bouncing in agitation, the motion transferred through the arm of her chair.

"It isn't just the drugs —"

"Good to know," he cuts in, "since there aren't any."

That he happened to curtail his _better living through chemistry_ approach to existence right around the time he discovered his PA's painful past with an addict of his own is probably purely coincidence.

"It's also the _drinking_ ," Henry presses, devoid of all irony, "and the dirty laundry, and that goddamn dick pic fiasco."

It stuns Eliot into momentary silence, but Margo barks out a laugh. "That was a split-second shot from the show that some thirsty bitch screencapped, it's not like he texted his junk to unsuspecting extras."

Henry shrugs a bit and spreads his hands wide, lets the _Be that as it may…_ land between them unsaid.

"So it's not that they think I'm too big a queer," Eliot says, chilled at the base of his spine and numb through every bone. "They think I'm too big a _fuck up_."

Slipping off his glasses and setting them on the table, Henry looks Eliot in the eye and nods. "Too _public_ ," he says. "But yes. It's a question of whether mainstream moviegoers will support someone with… the kind of picture you present."

Right. Because he's just finished four seasons of playing the ultimate self-involved, self-destructive, sex-positive-and-in-every-flavor party boy, and while the part of his hindbrain that knows it's the best thing he's ever done is also convinced it's the best thing he'll ever do, so, it would seem, is the rest of Hollywood.

Compared to all that, the idea that he's a cokehead who can't control himself is just icing on the cake.

"This is bullshit." Margo leans over the table, hissing just loud enough for Henry to hear. "Downey was an addict who went to full-on fucking prison, and he still got to be goddamn Iron Man."

For a second, he feels for her. Not just a wave of affection at the backhanded compliment — which is the kind that Bambi does best — but a pang of regret that her incandescent rage is so thoroughly hampered by their location. When she'd decided to take this strategy session public, _type_ probably wasn't the kind of casting she had in mind.

But Henry Fogg hadn't built an A-List agency by being easily intimidated, not even by the ball-shriveling likes of Margo Hanson. It's exactly what makes the two of them such a perfect storm at overseeing Eliot's career, twin cyclones that clash to create a force of fucking nature.

Henry settles back in his seat, questioning, _challenging_ , daring his client to make the next move.

It'd be so easy to bow out gracefully, with the wave of a hand and the arch of an eyebrow and a throwaway comment just the right degree of _over it_. Sure, Margo might actually stop speaking to him for a stretch, but she'd get over it eventually — he'd been her person long before he was her meal ticket, and even if she needs him to keep herself in the lifestyle and wardrobe to which she's become accustomed, he's fairly sure that she needs him more, full stop. Maybe even as much as he needs her.

It's just… _fuck_ , he wants this part. Enough to fight for it, even if the thing he has to fight is his reflection, a villain of his own making.

 _Complex characters_ , Quentin had said. Plural.

Eliot pulls in a breath, squares his head on his shoulders. Conjures a motherfucking cape.

"I'm not Nigel."

It gets the rare smile that actually shows teeth. "I know that," Henry replies. "Now let's show the rest of the world."

"Hey, Earth to Q. Come in, Coldwater."

Quentin snaps his eyes back to Julia from the distraction over her shoulder, where he can see El and Margo seated on the other side of the patio — or at least the sliver of Margo that isn't blocked by the back of Henry Fogg's head.

Eliot, he can see just fine.

"And he's back online," Julia says wryly. "If I didn't know better, I'd think I was the person you spend every waking moment with, and _Eliot_ was the one you hadn't seen in more than a month."

Pressing his hands between his knees, he gives her a smile he hopes isn't too strained.

"Sorry, I'm…" He cuts his eyes back to the other table, where Eliot looks a little like he's going to be sick. "Distracted."

"It's okay." She shrugs, but the twinkle in her eyes is wicked. "He's distracting."

"Jesus, Julia," he mutters, dropping back in his seat, "for once, can we, just, _not_?"

It comes out sharper than he'd intended, but she hasn't taken tone personally in years. She raises both hands, a show of surrender, and the guilt sets in, anyway.

He _is_ happy to see her — they talk a few times a week, wherever she is, but it's tough to maintain a face-to-face schedule when she's always busy being America's sweetheart. He just… can't do this with her, like _at all_ , preferably, but especially not right here and now.

"You've got Kimmel taping today, right?"

It gets him a groan, but she's grinning while she does it. "Corden," she says. "Kimmel's tomorrow, which is gonna be great. The clip is _so much better_ for Kimmel."

There's a wave of affection at the excitement in her voice that washes away the last bits of guilt. She's back in town to promote her latest project — a frothy feel-good about a girl who falls into bed with the charming stranger she'd stopped to help, and then wakes up an actual goddess — that's the first thing she's gotten to exec produce, and she's been riding this high since last night's premiere.

Quentin shifts forward a bit, feels some of the tension fall out of his limbs. "I'm really proud of you, Jules."

She beams her thanks back at him with a curly, quirky smile, the one that's been lighting up screens for half his life. "I'm pretty proud of me, too," she says. Her hand darts out to brush the hair back from his face, then drops to drum her nails on the table, clearly craving a cigarette. She never could hold out for too long — on her social smoking habit, or on trying her damndest to fix his fucked-up brain. "I'd return the sentiment, if I didn't think you'd freak out and try to gag me with your napkin. Seriously… have you told him?"

He glances over at Eliot, who's blanching at whatever Fogg seems to be saying, and shakes his head.

"Q, he's gonna find out sooner or later. And at this point, _later_ is kind of a long shot. Isn't it better if he hears it from you?"

Her voice is the exact frequency of kindness and concern she used to use on the worst of his bad brain days, and crossing the context streams makes his skin feel too tight. He knows she means well — she always, always _means well_ — but she can't honestly think that this is helping. And since even the thought of coming clean is on the verge of giving him hives, he's leaning heavily towards his answer being _no_.

She tilts her head, a tiny plea. "I'm just saying… it seems like things are about to get messy."

"And you want to, what," he mutters, "welcome me to the club?"

He doesn't actually think the reminder of her own not-so-tidy situation will completely shift her focus so much as knock her off course enough to drop the subject, but she just shrugs, her eyes soft and knowing. "If that's what it takes," she says, and means it. "I am the angel protecting your future, Coldwater."

There's motion behind her before either of them can say anything else at all, and he watches Eliot stand and nod as Fogg exits, watches him wrap Margo up in his arms and kiss her goodbye.

The promise of impending company must show on his face — Julia slips on a smile as Eliot trots over to their table, and it's a grin by the time he arrives.

She glances way up to greet him, her face open and warm. "Hey, El."

"Lady Jane," Eliot answers, bowing dramatically at the waist until he can press his lips to the top of her head. It makes for a very pretty picture — Quentin can practically hear the shutters clicking behind the gate, can almost envision the captions that will run with the images. _Julia Wicker and Eliot Waugh share a sweet smooch before lunch with an unidentified friend._

Or so he can hope. As also-rans go, the ones where someone actually identifies him by name and _former Fillory star_ title tend to be so much worse.

It still gets to him, though, seeing them this way. Knowing the two most important people in his life genuinely enjoy each other's company. And stings a bit, sometimes, on the too-rare occasions when the three of them are together. He'd spent a good chunk of his childhood onscreen as one third of the Chatwin Trio, but offscreen, the Quentin and Julia and James of it all had been painfully short-lived — there'd been Quentin and Julia, and James and addiction, until there'd just been no James at all.

Quentin blinks away the past just in time to catch Eliot sliding into the seat across from him, one hand reaching for Julia's cone of shoestring fries.

"Don't," he mumbles, "they're tossed in truffle oil," and shoves his house chips at Eliot instead.

Julia looks back and forth between them, adorably perplexed. "What's… wrong with truffle oil?"

"Nothing whatsoever," Eliot says, "aside from the fact that it's" — and Quentin chimes in, flat and monotone — "a culinary crime against humanity."

"Ah." Her smile comes back, but her eyes are soft and sympathetic now, and fixed on Quentin alone. "Thanks for clearing that up."

Clearing his throat, Quentin turns squarely to Eliot. "How'd the meeting go?"

"Well, it sounds like Mayakovsky may actually know my real name, so, at least there's that." He crunches thoughtfully at a chip and rubs his fingers together to get rid of the salt. "The _studio_ , on the other hand, is finding me a little hard to swallow."

Quentin blinks. "What?"

"I know," Eliot says. "I did mention that spitting is always an option, but I'm not sure how well it went over."

"No, I — what the hell does that _mean_?" Eliot opens his mouth, his expression still airy and unaffected and carefully coy, and Quentin drops his head back to the sky. "I swear to god, Eliot, if you explain that fucking joke, the next thing you spit will be crime fries."

Julia lets out a shocked little laugh, but he's focused on Eliot, on watching that walking wounded look in his eyes wipe away when the amusement kicks in.

"So _violent_ ," El says, shooting Jules an indulgent smirk. "And in front of the lady, no less." He leans back and stretches his legs out under the table, crossing his ankles right against Quentin's calves. "Apparently I have an _image problem_."

"Okay," Jules scoffs, "so did Downey," and Eliot tilts his head, takes one of her hands in his, and sets his lazy grin to stun.

"Why Miss Wicker," he drawls, selling it to the cheap seats, "I do believe I may have wildly underestimated my affection for you."

She laughs, snatching her hand back to shove at his smiling face, and Quentin's whole chest constricts. "Forget it, I take it all back. Downey's never been that big a ham."

Eliot snorts. "Clearly you skipped _Tropic Thunder_."

Quentin shakes his head at them both, feeling fuzzy and warm, then clears his throat to bring the focus back.

"Define _problem_ , El."

With a sigh, Eliot starts counting off fingers. "Drinking. Drugs. Dick. Mix and match, it's kind of a grab bag. I guess my sparkling reputation as the life of the party fuckboy worked fine for the hot mess I was playing, but it's not gonna fly for an arthouse superhero. The powers that be are none too keen on casting someone who's primary press is tabloid fodder and TMZ." Quentin pulls in a breath to object — it won't change anything, in the grand scheme of things, he just needs to negate it out loud — and Eliot waves a hand in his direction. "Fortunately for the future of my career, my intrepid agent has proposed a hail Mary play to make my ass more marketable."

"Your ass wasn't on the list," Quentin grumbles. "So this grand plan is… what?"

El snags a waitress as she goes by and practically charms her into a coma while he orders a sparkling water, smiling after her before he turns back. "Not a plan," he says, "a _date_."

"Yeah," Quentin says, brows furrowed, "that one, you need to explain."

"Oh, but I'm serious." For a second he flashes actual jazz hands, then starts polishing off the rest of Quentin's chips. Jules isn't the only one itching for a nicotine fix. "They want to auction off a night on the town with yours truly, proceeds to very publicly benefit a charity of my choice."

Quentin tries not to cringe at that and fails. Eliot regularly donates to a handful of organizations, and it's always as private as it is ridiculously generous. The fact that his chosen causes are almost always along the same lines — queer kids, abused kids, kids with big dreams who are trapped by circumstance — likely has a lot to do with it.

"Maybe I'm missing something," Jules says. "How exactly is the perception that you party too much helped by… _more partying_ , but this time with a random fan in the mix?"

Eliot hums. "Think party the noun, not party the verb. They want something high profile, where I can be on my best behavior for all the world to see. Henry's got that Sunderland premiere at ArcLight in a few weeks, my guess is it'll happen then."

He lays out the basic logistics, flashing the already-stunned waitress a blinding smile when she brings his water over, and she nearly backs into the bar. Quentin knows that feeling — he has a dumbstruck first meeting memory of his own. Eliot just tends to have that effect.

And his agent wants to expose someone to this for _hours_.

"I mean, I get wanting to… appeal to the masses or whatever, but. Auctioning you off on the internet?" Quentin shakes his head. "That doesn't feel like Fogg."

Eliot gives him one of those looks that says Quentin's clearly missed something, but in sort of an endearing way. "It's a play for publicity, Q. Which means, as bright ideas go, I think you know who we have to thank for this."

Quentin sighs — goddammit, _of course_ he does.

Irene McAllister is a multimillionaire, a communications magnate, and a woman prone to micromanaging her reputation. Given all that, you might think that she'd invest in better furniture.

Quentin folds himself further into the shallow cushions on the godawful couch, half writing bits of dialogue in the new journal in his lap and half watching Eliot power through the photoshoot for the Prizeo post. He's spent the last half hour trying to stumble onto a decent position and hasn't managed to find anything close to comfortable.

It's possible that Eliot's taste in seating has spoiled him just a bit.

He's never been a big fan of MCI headquarters, as a visitor or an employee — it's all a little too sharp and a little too cold and a little too polished, Irene included. But when Alice had told El to pick a personal location for the shoot, he had blinked up at Quentin and looked utterly lost before his face had gone shuttered and blank, and she had blanched and gathered her things and said they'd set something up at the in-house studio.

As if her sheer presence in Eliot's house hadn't already been awkward enough.

He'd shown her out and wandered back to the chef-caliber kitchen — sleek, bright, as rarely used as the rest of the house — and shoved his hands into his pockets.

 _We could give Rafe a call, look at WeHo again._ _Or someplace in the Hills, closer to Margo? I don't know why you stay here when you hate it._ And Eliot had snorted from his seat at the island, the box from the vanity in his trailer still shut tight on the next stool over. _Trust me, Q_ , he'd answered, tracing a finger along a vein in the countertop, _I would hate it just about anywhere_.

A shadow falls over his half-filled page, and he looks up as Alice stops beside the sofa. She doesn't bother to look at him, just appraises the shoot with crossed arms and a closed off expression.

Which she could do from anywhere, really, instead of literally standing right next to him.

He'd held his tongue back at the house the day before, since Eliot seems hell-bent on making the best of this shitshow, but something about her deliberate proximity is getting under his skin. Gritting his teeth, he goes back to his snippets of dialogue.

"Kinda throwing things at the wall to see what sticks on this one, aren't you?"

His fingers itch for his computer — this would be so much more satisfying with the audible click of keys. It would at least dampen the sound she makes in the back of her throat, the one that's dripping with disdain.

He's more than familiar with it by now — even with his eyes locked elsewhere, he knows her lip is curling.

"I got creative," she says flatly. "That's what happens when you have to overhaul an actor's entire image overnight."

On second thought, a keyboard would definitely make it harder to hide the way his hands clench into fists.

"You mean the one you spent the last few years fine tuning?" His nails are biting into his palms, and the pen caught between in his right pinches the bend behind his knuckles. "Don't put this all on him, Alice. You never gave a shit if people thought he actually _was_ a hot mess when it worked for promoting the show."

She finally spins to look down at him, and his head comes up to glare back at her. "I was doing my _job_ ," she snaps, "the same way I'm doing it now. I know how much you love being The Waugh Whisperer and all, but Eliot's a big boy, Quentin. He doesn't need you to fight his battles."

"Why is any of this a battle to begin with?" he counters. "You're supposed to be on his side."

The photographer calls a five for the final lighting reset, El tosses back a _thank you, five_ like the theater kid he is, and Quentin turns to watch him stride over while Alice turns in the other direction entirely.

"Alice," El says, dropping down on the couch next to him. "Lovely to see you, as always."

Her smile is professional, if tight-lipped and strained. Eliot doesn't seem to notice, too busy nodding to the little stool between Alice and the arm of the sofa, where Quentin's fruit cup from catering sits half-eaten.

"Anything interesting in there?" he says, and his eyes spark knowingly. "Sharing is caring, Coldwater."

Quentin rolls his eyes and hands him the container — the only things left are the blueberries and the red grapes, which is all Eliot ever wants, anyway. Not that Quentin eats around Eliot's preferences — because that would be sad — they just… happen to have compatible tastes for fruit cup sharing.

The noise Alice makes this time is one he doesn't have to know to decipher.

The next ones, though — the sound of a door slammed open, the sound of single-minded stilettos — are equally unmistakable, but infinitely more foreboding. The Destroyer is on the warpath.

"What the shit, Quinn?" Margo storms over, phone in hand and face full of fury. "We're shooting _video_ today?"

Alice raises an eyebrow, unruffled even in the face of certain doom. "You know how tight a turnaround this is," she says, "when else should I have shot it?"

"When I sign off and _say so_ is when. I haven't even seen a contract for this clusterfuck, and you've already got him going full goddamn infomercial."

"It's a high-level promo," Alice sighs, "and the prizes aren't changing. You'll have the paperwork by end of day."

"Down, Bambi," Eliot pipes up, still plucking all the grapes from Quentin's fruit cup. "It's fine."

"Is it now?" Margo scoffs. "'Cause it's not like I've seen a _script_ , either."

"I walked through the beats with Sheila before the shoot, so she could plug in the info on SHADE." He pops a blueberry into his mouth and mournfully sighs. "They've got me working off cue cards like an animal."

Alice sputters for a second, but quickly recovers. "I'm sorry," she says, sharp, "but… _SHADE_?"

Eliot nods, a little absently. The grapes are getting dangerously low. "Safe Haven for Arts and Drama Education. You know, housing, resources, tuition assistance, etcetera for queer kids pursing performing arts degrees." He flashes her a smile that's only a tiny bit patronizing. "Dreaming big don't exactly come cheap."

Quentin blinks back his surprise and bites his tongue on all the things he wants to ask — when had he found a new charity to champion? Does he plan on working with them regularly? How the hell does he look so comfortable on this couch? — but Alice is visibly trying to rein in her frustration.

"We provided a list of preferred organizations."

Eliot sits up straighter, the fruit forgotten, and for the first time in this entire exchange, actually matches the flint in her tone. "And I did my own homework. But thanks."

Alice grimaces, brittle. "The thing is —"

"As I recall, _the thing_ is a charity of my choice," he says. "So I thought, what the hell, I'll _choose a charity_. You know, as a treat." He stands with more grace than the torture trap of a sofa should allow, his face a study in boredom over a slow burning fuse. "Sheila has all the details. If we're done here, I have a saccharine video spot to shoot."

Quentin is already reaching for the fruit cup container by the time he hands it off, because Eliot pushed to this particular place prefers his dramatic exits to be seamless. He stops long enough to kiss Margo, because he's a smart man who doesn't have a death wish, then blows out an exaggerated breath.

"No rest for the wicked," he says, and goes back to set.

Alice shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling, arms held tight across her chest. "God," she mutters, almost under her breath, "he really is insufferable sometimes."

It makes Quentin cringe before she's even finished the sentence — whoever had first wondered whether looks could kill had never met Margo Hanson, or her vast collection of visual daggers. The only producer who'd ever dared to screw Eliot on a contract had dropped dead five minutes after she'd finished with him, and to this day, the urban legend-level buzz about the whole incident doesn't put much stock in coincidence.

Poor Bob. Heart attack or wrath of Hanson, he never knew what hit him.

She saunters purposefully toward Alice, her smile razor sharp, stops so close their toes may be touching. "Last I looked he also signs your fucking checks," she says, "so you may want to check your fee-fees at the door."

He isn't all that surprised that Alice stands her ground, less so that her mouth quivers when she presses it flat.

"You know what, you're right," she answers, maintaining eye contact with Margo for a length of time most people wouldn't risk. Then she neatly sidesteps until she's breathing free air, and glances over under the quirk of one eyebrow to pin him with a pointed look. "That's probably good advice all around."

Quentin looks down at his lap while she exits stage left.

He knows the sound of that, too.

Chez Coldwater is a curious mashup of Spanish Revival and storybook cottage, all arched doors and Saltillo floors, with multi-paned windows crafted in iron and beamed ceilings clad in original wood. And between the house itself, the casita behind it, and the cushy Silver Lake location — on a lot overlooking the reservoir, with the mountains stretched out in the distance and Ryan Gosling right around the goddamn corner — it's also a stark reminder that the reason why Quentin took this job isn't the actual paycheck.

Still, when it comes to the separation between work and play, Eliot's modern monstrosity in Malibu always falls firmly in the land of the former, while Quentin's place typically acts as host for the latter.

A few nights a week, they pick a bottle of wine and a thread of conversation and see both through to their end, until — more often than not — it gets late enough that Eliot crashes in the little guest house out back. And somewhere in there, they pick at the puzzle they've been piecing together for almost a year, the one that has taken up permanent residence across half of Q's coffee table and only has a handful of empty spaces left.

But some nights, when work can't be avoided but Eliot's empty house can, Quentin's courtyard is a very happy medium.

Those nights, the wine comes along, anyway.

Tonight's selection is a six-year-old Schiava, fruity and floral and slightly sweet, perfect for sinking into Quentin's deep patio sofa at sunset to watch the cotton candy sky change colors over the mountains. There's an arthouse film in here somewhere — Italian, perhaps, painted in jewel tones and pastels and the sound of peaceful silence.

The wine is less perfect for what he's _actually_ doing — scrolling through the proofs from the Prizeo shoot while Quentin ticks off all the rules detailed in the contest writeup, from hard copy no less — but fuck if this doesn't call for some sort of alcoholic assistance.

"Employees, independent contractors, officers, and directors of McAllister Communications Incorporated and its respective affiliates, subsidiaries, _blah blah blah_ , are not eligible to participate," Quentin drones. "All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older, must be a citizen or legal resident of the United States or outlying terr— _really_?"

Eliot's been fairly indifferent on the fine print so far, but that point in particular makes his mouth twist around his last sip of wine, the wash of strawberry on his tongue suddenly bitter.

"It's the golden rule of capitalism, Q — look to thine own ass first." He cringes at the terrible typography on the hero image mockup, where _Win a Date with Eliot Waugh!_ is screaming in marquee letters. "Are you surprised?"

He looks up to where Quentin is perched on the other end of the sofa in an almost impossible position — because Quentin sits, at all times, as if he fundamentally does not understand how furniture works — and watches his brows draw down.

"Nothing in this business surprises me anymore," he mutters, "least of all Irene McAllister. But whatever, um, entrants must be a citizen of the U.S. or outlying territories, must be —"

His voice goes out like someone's flipped a switch, but Eliot can tell from his face. From the way it flashes with surprise, then disbelief, and then goes carefully blank.

"Uh," Q stammers, and Eliot rolls his teeth over his lower lip and takes pity on his poor PA.

"Don't sweat it," he says, "I get the gist."

Quentin pulls his legs up and balances the stapled stack of paper on his knees, arms wrapped around his calves to hold onto the hem of his jeans. "Are _you_ surprised? Like, honestly? I mean, they're selling this whole thing as a date and doing it for the optics —"

"Yes," Eliot says, "and while at various points of substance-fueled self-destruction my tastes were varied and wide, as a reminder, I happen to date _men._ "

For a moment he wonders if it would've felt like less of a slap in the face had he been reading the damn thing himself. But no — Q had stopped short of actually saying the word, and though he can absolutely imagine it, it's not quite the same as seeing it in black and white. Fucking Irene. The woman has balls that can be seen from orbit. And it's not that he's surprised at the _attempt_ — they want him kept firmly in check, after all, so starting the effort with a woman is a fairly safe bet. No, he's surprised that the lump of reaction lodged at the back of his throat isn't made of anger alone, but an ugly tangle of offense and disappointment and a trailing thread of shock, wrapped around something soft in the center that aches.

He polishes off the rest of his glass in one gulp, and it tastes like nothing at all.

"Let's just… hold our questions 'til the end, okay?" he says, reaching for a refill and the minimum safe distance of emotional distraction. "For the record, this is the worst table read in Hollywood history."

Quentin snorts out a laugh, though his eyes are still smothered in concern. "Well, I work with what I'm given." Then he picks up the contract and starts reading again, scanning ahead until he scowls at the pages in his hands. "They want to map out your Instagram shots. I'm sorry, just… _Margo_ signed off on this?"

"See, that sounded _a lot_ like a question." Q has the decency to look chagrined, and Eliot smirks, sipping his wine. " _Margo_ would sign over her firstborn in blood if it meant getting me a role that I really wanted. She hasn't seen it yet. Your ex is on the thinnest of ice with my beloved Bambi, I want to flag anything that might make her murderous."

"So flagged," Quentin mumbles, glancing up to deliberately hold his eyes when most would've discretely looked away. "Um… anything else, while I'm at it?"

Eliot feels that thing in his throat catch again, has to make himself breathe evenly around it.

"Scratch all three," he says, managing to sound mostly like himself. "Open it up to anyone in any country where sweepstakes are allowed. On the off chance that the winner hails from Timbuktu, they can fucking bill me for the difference in airfare."

He assumes the third flag, taunting and red, needs no further instructions.

Q smiles, a soft and familiar thing, then drops his head and shoves at his hair and starts scribbling notes in the margins. He makes faces while he does it, tiny shifts in his expression, and his lips move a little when he reads. That first journal had been exactly the fluke find Eliot had described, but every one since has been driven by exactly this — the thought of Quentin on a note-taking tear, stopping to flex his fingers and chew on his pen, to work out whatever thought had grabbed him and refused to let go.

With a frankly Herculean amount of effort, he turns his attention to the proofs while Q makes his changes to the contract, wondering what the hell this brick wall backdrop and farmhouse stool is supposed to communicate about him as a person. To be fair, they'd been tight on time and even tighter on options, and one of those things is pretty firmly his fault. But when Alice had asked him to choose a location for the shoot, somewhere he felt most comfortable and connected, the first place that sprang to mind had been _here_ — Quentin's architectural identity crisis of a house, flooded with sunlight and chock full of character, warm and settled and lived-in. It feels more like a home than anywhere Eliot's ever been, or at least more like the way he thinks a home should feel.

The fact that, when he's here, it also happens to contain a Quentin… well, that certainly doesn't hurt.

His eyes come up to watch him over the rim of his glass, wondering for maybe the millionth time if he'd grown his hair out to hide a face that used to be famous. Then said face does something delightfully indescribable, just for a split second, and Eliot gives in to a temptation that's been more than three years in the making.

"Out of curiosity," he says, "you really don't plan on acting again?"

Quentin's scribbling comes to an abrupt stop. "Wha— _no_." He blinks up at Eliot, looking preciously vexed, and bounces the pen between the pads of his fingers. "That was… really random, El."

Eliot raises both eyebrows but only one shoulder, aiming for an air of accidental interest. "Like I said, I was just curious." He sips his Schiava, gone just the wrong side of too warm, and knows he needn't have bothered — Q can see through him in so many ways, except when whatever there is to see has to do with Quentin himself.

Still, there's no real harm in pressing.

"And you've never once had the urge to, I don't know, do naked horse theater in some desperate play to be seen as a Serious Actor?"

"Um," Quentin says, around a choked little laugh, "as in the play _itself_ was desperate, or just the act of doing it at all?"

Eliot snorts. "Yes."

Q shrugs and shakes his head, the ridiculous sum of his features — the squint of his eyes and the slope of his brows and the slant of that Suessian mouth — flashing through a dozen different expressions at once.

Eliot is well aware of what he looks like, knows the self-portrait he paints for the world — the armor of his clothes and the kohl around his eyes, the artful product-sculpted disarray of his hair. But Quentin just _exists_ this way, in nameless, shapeless shades of black and grey and blue moon navy, in untamed eyebrows and a haphazard bun and clean, clear skin he scrubs with little more than soap. Unfiltered, and effortlessly lovely.

But _this_ is the thing that's truly beautiful to behold — the play of those features and the light in those eyes, the way every passing thought and feeling plays across the ever-changing canvas of his face.

It's tragic, truly, that Eliot can't get him back in front of a camera. Daniel Radcliffe's got nothing on Quentin Coldwater.

That face has turned thoughtful now, with something a little sad underneath. "I mean, _never_ is a strong word," Quentin says, twisting his pen into the sleeve of his shirt. "But it's close? Maybe with some seriously extenuating circumstances, but… I'm a writer, El. Acting is, just. The way I figured that out."

His mouth presses into a flat line, and Eliot thinks that it's possible he's pressed too far.

"Hey," he says, and waits for those big basset hound eyes to stop staring off into middle distance. "I know you're a writer, Q. I wasn't asking because I've spontaneously lost faith in your illustrious career to come."

It may make Quentin squirm in his seat, but lip service it is not. Eliot's read _The Alchemy League_ — Quentin's engrossing, imaginative screenplay about a group of friends fending off an all-powerful big bad at an Ivy-adjacent grad school for burgeoning magicians — in nearly all its iterations, and the only thing remotely wrong with it is that Q refuses to let himself finish. He's a good writer, he is. Even seems mostly sure about that. But between throwaway comments and his general feelings about _Fillory_ , Eliot has serious doubts that he knows he's a good actor, too.

"My point is, most people aren't lucky enough to be as talented as you are at _one_ thing. I guess I couldn't help but wonder if you were truly done with the other."

God help him, Quentin _blushes_ at that, flushes pretty and pink, a wash of color in his cheeks and down the front of his neck and all across the bridge his nose. The sight of it pangs painfully in Eliot's chest — with all of his childhood cheerleaders gone, or at least frequently absent, in Julia's case… how long has it been since someone looked Q in the eye and told him he was special?

The stricken expression that settles on his face is all the answer Eliot needs.

 _Too long_.

Eliot always pays his compliments with tongue firmly in cheek, careful not to give too much away. He'll have to do it like this more often — clear and undiluted. A straight shot of truth, no chaser.

Quentin opens his mouth and closes it again. He has such a way with words, sometimes, such a penchant for finding the perfect phrase for a particular sentiment. But sometimes he seems overwhelmed by the sheer possibility of language, and either gets caught in a stuttering stream of consciousness or struggles to string two words together.

Eliot kind of lives for those moments. There's something so endearing about seeing someone with such a gift for the written word stumble over the ones he has to say out loud.

"I, uh…" That furrow carved between Quentin's brows comes back, and in what Eliot can only hope is an _entirely_ unrelated segue, given the subject — and train of thought — currently at hand, the words Q eventually comes up with are "Sorry, about the other day. You know, with Alice."

Cocking his head to one side, Eliot plays back a mental clip of the interaction. Mostly he remembers looking over at Quentin in between shots, seeing him scribble furiously in his latest journal and shake his hands out, like he could cast little spells with his fingers.

In a way, Eliot figures, he can.

"I'm not entirely sure I know what you mean."

Q shrugs, a little helpless. "Just, the way she… _is_ , I guess? That's, it's not even about you, not really."

"Mmm, I beg to differ," Eliot says, low and droll. "Though I can't say I really blame her, I did more or less steal her man." And, see, that's exactly the kind of thing that he's not supposed to say. Things that make Quentin's mouth part and his eyes widen in a way that looks caught, that make Eliot have to scramble for cover. " _Professionally_."

To be perfectly honest, it does sting a bit — sharp, shrewd, stacked-to-the-gods Alice Quinn had actually _liked him_ , once upon a time. He used to bring little bribes to their twice-monthly meetings — a sparkly pen here, sickeningly sweet frozen Starbucks there — and coax genuine smiles out of her. But maybe the chain of events that had started all this was always meant to bring them right here, where all the strings stretched to connect all the dots: power producer Genji Quinn introducing her niece to the lead in her most famous franchise, and Alice, in turn, using her own internship placement to recommend Q to Irene.

Or _maybe_ she'd just been shrewd enough to see what Eliot really wanted from her boyfriend.

"I'm just saying… the circumstances here aren't exactly normal. If this whole situation is more trouble than it's worth, or just... _uncomfortable_ , or whatever, you could always change reps."

Eliot would laugh at the sheer ridiculous of that notion — he once spent five hours filming inside a closed coffin and managed to nap between takes — if Quentin didn't look so uncomfortable, himself.

Q shoves at his hair and looks down at his lap. "Or, you know," he says, "assistants."

That, Eliot doesn't find funny at all.

He finishes the rest of his wine, swallows slowly enough to get his head and his heart in check. It's lukewarm as hell by now, but all the blood in him has gone cold enough to cancel it out.

"Okay, this has taken a turn." His own voice sounds foreign, comes to him from far away. "Is there something you're trying to tell me, Quentin?"

"I, _no_." Quentin jerks his head up, his eyes wide and wild before they settle. "No, that's… I'm not trying to _leave_ , El, I'm. Trying to keep things from getting too awkward."

"He said, ignoring the inherent awkwardness of this entire conversation." Eliot shifts to set his empty glass on the table, suddenly all too aware that the bottle is every bit as empty. But something shook loose in his lungs at Quentin's assurance, and he can almost breathe normally now.

Fuck it, he needs a cigarette.

He lights up and leans back, taking a drag in deep and trying to regain some semblance of composure. Just a pretty smokescreen, indeed.

"The strategy here is simple, Q," he says, aiming for cool detachment and landing somewhere in the general vicinity of mildly perturbed. "On one hand, my publicist seems to loathe the very ground that I walk on. On the other, she takes an immense amount of pride in her work. And since I am but a small cog in a very large wheel, something tells me she's far more invested in the latter. So if Alice Quinn can actively despise me and still propose a plan she thinks will paint me in any shade of positive, it's a safe bet that said plan will work for the world at large. Things may get tense sometimes, but… How could I ever find a better rep than that?"

Quentin looks like he wants to object to it all, with that furious little flinch that means his indignance is on Eliot's behalf, and just like that, the world makes sense again.

Eliot taps the ash off his menthol and takes a deep breath, gives Q the steadiest smile he can manage.

"I appreciate the concern, I honestly do," he says, "but can we stop tilting at windmills and get back to the terrible table read? Margo waits for no man, contract, or existential crisis."

For a second, Quentin looks torn. Then he nods, reluctant but resigned, and turns his attention back to the contract.

Two hours before the _Travelers_ premiere, Quentin is planted in the center of El's dressing room, phone in hand, back on the floor, legs propped on a big tufted bench, as Eliot preps for The Date.

The whole setup is sort of excessive, even as excess goes — all dark walls and plush carpet and wood cabinetry that puts his lavish wardrobe on full display — but since it had been pretty barebones when the house hit the market, and finishing from a custom closet design company had been included with the sale, it's also pretty much the only room in the house that actually feels like Eliot.

"Kira says she's ready for you," he calls in the direction of the attached master bath. He's actually managed to get through a good chunk of the open items in his inbox this way, firing off replies and then filing them away, calling out random things he needs Eliot to confirm. May as well put the time to good use — El's full hair and makeup cycle can take… a while. "She figures it'll take four rounds of fittings."

Eliot's voice bounces back to him, amplified by the bathroom acoustics. "Well that doesn't sound at all excessive."

"Is that what you want me to tell her?" Quentin scoffs. "'Cause it's pretty far from 'it's the goddamn Met Gala, Quentin, the options are _go big_ or _go bigger_ '."

"You know, I will never win an argument as long as you can quote me with perfect fucking recall."

Quentin frowns up at the ceiling. "Are we… planning on arguing?"

"No," El answers, "but it's the principle."

He sighs, but there's nothing serious behind it — beneath the boredom and bravado, Quentin can tell he's excited for this one. After being dressed by Vivienne Westwood last year, and draped in McQueen the year before that, El had taken one look at this year's theme announcement — Once Upon a Time: The Fashion of Fairy Tales — and actually let Quentin talk him into something _fashion-related_. Maybe the biggest fashion-related something possible. But Quentin had worked with Kira on five _Fillory_ films and seen firsthand the wildly creative things she could dream up… skills that would be sorely needed to execute Eliot's vision.

 _Really,_ he'd said flatly, when El had first shared the idea, y _ou want to go as The Little Mermaid_. Eliot had rolled his eyes. _Well not the neutered Disney version,_ he'd answered, _the Hans Christian Andersen original. In all its forbidden gay glory._ Quentin had blinked, thoroughly confused, and El had given him a look he never did decipher.

 _He wrote it as a love letter, Q,_ he'd explained, soft and sad, _to a man he couldn't have._

Fortunately, he and Kira had hit it off right away, and developed the concept together like some sort of cooperative magic. The sketches she'd delivered had gone above and beyond what even Eliot had imagined — a collared corset vest in foiled velvet embroidered with a coral reef of winding musical notes over a hand-dyed silk shirt that trailed flowing layers of soft seafoam tulle like a train, and a shimmering pair of slim-cut pants made entirely of individual iridescent fish scales.

The last few emails between them have involved brainstorming the best way to depict the concept of _knives_ with Eliot's shoes, so… whatever the hell lies beyond _bigger_ , he's pretty sure they're well on their way.

"Kindly let Kira know that I remain ever at her mercy."

Quentin raises an eyebrow, thumbs paused mid-tap. "Do you mean _disposal_? Because I feel like you might."

"It's four separate sessions of wrapping me in mermaid chainmail from the waist down." Eliot comes in from the bathroom, effectively moving from one mirror to another. "Same difference."

He turns to the valet stand at his side and begins adding the last layers of the night's ensemble, and Quentin tries not to fall in to the visual distraction that is Eliot Waugh getting dressed — the graceful fingers buttoning his vest and smoothing his collar, crafting the intricate trinity knot of his tie.

El smiles fondly at him in the full-length mirror as he fastens his cufflinks, as if Quentin is endlessly amusing.

"You know," he says, "one might think that ottoman was placed there for the express purpose of _sitting_ ," and Quentin is suddenly so overwhelmed at the sight of him, upside-down and miles fucking high, that all the words he needs to say rush to the tip of his tongue.

Then his phone rings and startles him half to death and he drops the damn thing on his face, so, that might be a sign that this isn't actually his moment.

He answers the call and rubs at his forehead, where the corner caught him right between the eyes. "Hey, Margo."

"Is there a reason his highness isn't answering his fucking phone?"

"Uh, depending on when you called, either eyeliner or a lot of leave-in conditioner? Hang on." Frowning, he taps at the screen. Eliot's reflection grins wider above him. "Okay, you're on speaker."

"Hello there, light of my life," Eliot says brightly, "and how are we this fine evening?"

" _We_ are reviewing the rules of engagement for tonight's festivities," Margo says, "to make sure this shit doesn't go sideways. So, two drink max, tobacco smokes only, and try to keep your dick in your pants, capisce?"

Eliot snorts. "Well that will certainly make the bathroom breaks more interesting."

"Okay, asshole," she snaps, "you want me to spell it out for you? _Do not bang the publicity stunt._ We're selling a wholesome experience, not a virgin sacrifice. That's not the tale we want him taking back to the heartland."

"Pretty sure he's actually from Texas," Quentin mumbles, and immediately wishes he hadn't.

"Does it _sound_ like I give a shit, Quentin? You're not there to correct my geography, you're there to be a good little chaperone. So keep your mouth shut, keep your eyes open, and keep the cowboy from getting the ride of his podunk little life."

"Um." He glances up anxiously to where Eliot has frozen mid tie tuck. "Will do."

He watches El blink, stalling and restarting as if nothing has happened. "This may come as a shock," he says, surprisingly even, "but I don't actually fuck everything that moves."

"Oh, don't act like I've offended your delicate sensibilities. This kid literally paid to have you all to himself for the night, let's just head off any _Pretty Woman_ fantasies at the pass." She pauses, and for a moment, everything is still, so quiet Quentin can hear himself breathe. Then she blows out a big puff of frustrated air, voice going grave for a final word of warning. "I'm serious, Eliot. You are so close to this part you could suck its cock without stretching. All you have to do is keep your shit together and get through the goddamn night."

Eliot turns toward the corner and his face moves out of frame, one hand coming up to the top of the valet.

"Yeah," he says, a little hollow, "okay."

Quentin doesn't have the heart to tell him that she's already gone.

Just as he opens his mouth to ask if Eliot's alright, El draws himself up and shrugs into his jacket, slips his phone and wallet into his pocket. "Ready to get this shitshow on the road?" he tosses out, and walks away without waiting for an answer, leaving Quentin to scramble up and after him.

The limo's a rental, but their driver is not. With the partition down, Quentin spends the first stretch of the ride to the winner's hotel hoping Todd doesn't try to make small talk. And even though they've got miles of empty space in the back, Quentin is curled up on the seat with his spine in El's side, scrolling through his phone while Eliot smokes and idly plays with the ends of Quentin's hair.

It's a lesson he'd learned early on, and confirmed kind of awkwardly with Margo a couple months in — even at times like this, when El is locked down and tuned out, he remains tactile to fault.

Drawing him back out, on the other hand, is a skill that Quentin has taught himself.

"You're gonna wrinkle," he says, squarely calling attention to the contact.

Eliot's hand stops for a second, then moves more deliberately. "Your concern is duly noted," he answers, the tips of his fingers scratching lightly at Quentin's scalp. "Now ask me if I give a single fuck."

The exchange is easy enough, but he still doesn't sound like himself. There's something else simmering, since the cigarette has come out inside the car — he's been too quiet since Margo's call, contemplative and withdrawn, and needs to be diffused before he implodes.

Wrong-footed, he watches the smoke curl up to the carpeted ceiling, watches El twist his ring back and forth with the pad of his thumb. It's the one that had been a gift from Margo, the only one he wears no matter what. Quentin had asked about it pretty early on, catching the glint of it as the first glasses of the night had been filled, and gotten a fond, wistful smile in return. _Moonstone_. _It means rebirth_. And he'd said it as if its symbolism was the reason why it never left his finger, and not the tie to the person who'd put it there.

He'd asked about that too, once, on a different night entirely — well after one a.m., and already a bottle and a half deep. _Margo is singular_ , Eliot had said, sounding light but looking heavy. _I don't know what else to tell you, Q. She's kind of the only person I've ever loved who just… loved me, too._

"It's not like she actually agrees with them, El. She's as frustrated with all this as you are."

Eliot's swallow is almost more audible than his voice. "Yeah, I know."

Swinging his legs off the seat and setting his phone aside, Quentin shifts until they're shoulder to shoulder, leaning his weight into Eliot's warmth, and he can clearly see his face.

" _Do_ you?"

It doesn't get an answer, but he does toss the cigarette out half-smoked, lets some fresh air come back in, which… is better than nothing.

Quentin watches him watch the world streak by through the open window, for once, completely at a loss for how to reach him. Then Eliot rolls up the window and, just as he's always done — with the journals, with this job, with late nights and little touches and the loaded tale of Logan Kinnear — simply opens up and lets him in.

"You know why I'm an actor, Q?" he asks, almost offhand. And Quentin knows all the random bullshit Eliot's tossed out in interviews in response to that question, but it's possible that only Margo has ever heard the real answer. "My mother had three boys, got the youngest one to twelve, and then along came yours truly, so. I suppose I've been disappointing since conception. She always said that I was too energetic, too emotional. Too exhausting. It meant a lot of things in my head over the years — first it was 'too different,' and then it was 'too feminine,' and then it was 'too gay,' but… in the end, it all added up to _too_ _much_."

For a moment Quentin is irrationally glad that Eliot won't look at him — by the time he makes himself blink back his shock, he can only imagine what his face must look like.

El has talked about what his father was like, in broad but blatantly abusive terms. But he never had mentioned his mother, not really. And Quentin hadn't thought anything in Indiana held good memories for Eliot, but he'd assumed that she had at least been… _better_ , whatever the hell that looked like. Better than the way El's mouth would always twist just a bit around the word _Dad_ , better than the scar that crawls pale and raised across the back of both thighs, where he'd been hit with something other than a hand.

This, though… This is worse.

Eliot sniffs, his cigarette hand flexing on his knee. "I let it fuck with me for a while," he says. "Broke curfew, bleached my hair, blew random farm boys in the back forty. Then, spring of sophomore year, I landed the lead in _Godspell_. And it didn't matter that, for the first time in my life, my mother actually approved of anything I was doing. Which tracked, I guess — it's hard to be mad that your kid is in makeup and dressed like a hippie when the part he's playing is Jesus."

There's an odd detachment in his voice through all of it, as if he's never put these particular words together this way, but he wants to say them once and then forget they ever existed. The sound of it tears something loose behind Quentin's ribs, makes it drop hard and heavy into the pit of his stomach.

"What _mattered_ was that, on stage, I could lean into _too much_ with everything I had. I could be as dramatic and emotional as I wanted. I could be all the different versions of myself, or be someone else entirely, and people would _applaud_ and toss flowers at my feet."

His voice is a nerve now, his face stoic and still and sketched in shadows. It's possible even Margo has never heard this at all.

"So, I took all my _too much_ and fled to New York, where I could be anyone at all. And eventually…" He shrugs, all out of steam. "Eventually, playing a part was just easier than being me."

Quentin blows out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. It's hardly unprecedented for one of them to do this — they're constantly telling hard truths in each other's company, laying the contents of their heads at each other's feet. But it's usually over wine and the puzzle, in the quiet comfort of Quentin's little house, and by some unspoken agreement, it's always acknowledged with something they can laugh off and set aside, before the weight of the words gets crushing.

He knows that's what El is expecting here, their tried and true status quo, but he can't quite make himself snort and snark _You bleached_ _your_ _hair?_ like his heart hasn't just torn in half. Like what he really wants to say isn't _Oh, Eliot, you're an actor because you just wanted someone to_ see _you_.

Quentin twists around until he can face Eliot straight on.

"Your mother was wrong, El," he says, desperate but sure. "You're not… she was _wrong_. Tell me you know that."

The car rolls gently to a stop as Eliot blows out a laugh on a breath. "Of course I do, Quentin. That's the joke, isn't it? All that time she thought I was too much, and really, I'm just not enough."

Everything in Quentin goes a little bit cold. " _Eliot —_ "

But Todd is already opening the door at the curb, and El kisses Quentin's temple and slips on his fixed for-the-cameras smile.

"Once more unto the breach," he says.

Then he climbs out of the car, hand already high and waving to the photogs, and he's gone in a blinding blur of flashbulbs.


	2. All Your Perfectly Delivered Lines

Bambi hadn't been kidding about the _Pretty Woman_ parallel — they've stashed the winner in a room at the Beverly Wilshire with a view of Rodeo Drive, even treated him to two days of shopping and tourist traps ahead of tonight's premiere.

Eliot steps off the elevator and into an empty hallway, one blessedly free of the aggressively floral scent that had permeated the lobby to the point of near nausea. They'd picked this hotel for the name recognition, he figures, not the experience — the floor is almost laughably low.

He finds the right room and straightens his jacket, smooths his hands down the front of his waistcoat. _Fine_ , he tells the little Quentin in his head, _perhaps one solitary fuck was given, in the name of first impressions._

Then the door opens before he even has a chance to knock, and… _oh._ Twist.

Eliot's been torn since the contest closing, when the winner was drawn and announced and decidedly, decisively male. Yes, it had felt like a victory in the moment, and given way to a deep sense of satisfaction in the days since. But there's a better than decent chance that, had things gone another way, Margo's pre-game lecture would've been one particular point shorter… and Henry's email from even earlier, the one that urged _self-control, or at the very least, discretion_ , would likely never have been sent at all.

To be perfectly honest, he's been dreading this all fucking day. And that dread had spiraled into a wide array of worst-case scenarios, each case a little worse than the last — everything from small town baby gay looking to be initiated to vaguely homophobic hick looking for a free trip to Hollywood — before he'd been able to brace himself for the likeliest of possibilities, given the circumstances: fawning fanboy who would spend the entire night either asking endless questions or overwhelmed into awkward silence.

What he hadn't considered was anything close to the man standing in the open doorway, all easy confidence and eye contact. He takes a beat to take in the whole package — average height, solid build, blond-haired and blue-eyed with scruff that's actually been groomed, all wrapped in a black-on-black suit.

"Let me guess," the guy says, grit with just a hint of twang. "You expected more denim."

If this were a movie, he'd be the walking personification of one half of a romcom meet cute.

Eliot's mouth quirks at one corner, the dread yielding to a rush of pleasant surprise. "To be perfectly honest," he answers, "when they said Texas, I was fully prepared to endure a Stetson and a string tie."

The little laugh it gets becomes a hum around a lazy grin. "I'm afraid you don't get me at my full Stetson 'til at least the second date." He holds out a hand, still smiling. "Mike."

Eliot takes the hand extended and briefly concedes that Margo may have had the smallest of possible points. "Eliot."

They exchange casual conversation down the hallway and in the elevator and across the overly fragrant lobby — the flight, the weather, the baffling existence of carpool lanes — until they emerge from the revolving door onto the street. The photographers he'd waved for on the way in are still milling around outside, a much bigger crowd than he'd anticipated — MCI must have tipped them off to engineer a photo op — but Eliot puts a hand high on Mike's back and makes a beeline for the limo. Traffic down Sunset will likely be a nightmare, and they'll have enough cameras to contend with on the carpet.

Mike lets out a startled laugh as they duck inside and Todd slams the door shut on their heels.

"Do you always travel with an entourage?" he asks, making Quentin look up from his phone. Q has moved to one of the seats along the side of the car, though he still can't sit like a normal person, all folded up on the leather with one leg tucked under him and his chin propped on the opposite knee.

Eliot chuckles, pretty much at them both. "Just the friendly neighborhood stalkers. Welcome to Hollywood, where the paparazzi run bountiful and free." Mike shakes his head good-naturedly, and he realizes he'd misinterpreted the question. "Oh, right. This is Quentin —"

"Coldwater," Mike cuts in, shuffling over in the seat to reach over to the opposite seat. "Mike McCormick. Good to meet you."

Q frowns at Mike's open palm as if he's never seen a human hand before. He typically isn't caught this off balance by being recognized — something strange must be afoot in his inbox. "Uh," he finally mumbles, shaking so fast he barely makes contact. "Yeah, hi."

"It's hardly an entourage," Eliot says. "Someone has to drive, hence" — he gestures vaguely — "Todd. Quentin's here to make sure I behave."

"Now that's a shame." It hangs there for a moment, loaded and lingering, before Mike ducks his head. "Uh, sorry, I know that sounded… I'm sure Quentin here has better things to do, is all."

Quentin snorts, buried in his phone again and scoffing under his breath. "Never managed to stop him before."

Eliot bites down on the inside of his cheek, because it's less painful than whatever had just lanced through his chest.

"Everything okay, Q?"

It makes Quentin snap his head up, either because Eliot had addressed him by name or because it sounded more than a little like _What the fuck?_ "Sorry," he says, shaking himself, "I just… sorry." He puts the phone down and pulls his eyebrows together, eyes darting up to Mike and then away again. "So, um… where in Texas is Brakebills, exactly?"

"We're a good eighty miles southeast of San Angelo."

"Oh, cool," Todd pipes up from the front, "where The Alamo is."

Mike politely presses his mouth flat. "Oh, no, that's San Antone."

"E-oh," Quentin mutters, folding the end of his shoelace over itself. Eliot glares across the back of the limo — he may not know what the hell is going on, but good lord, Q can be such a goddamn brat sometimes.

Doesn't mean he can't subtract one factor from the equation. He reaches up to a hit a button on the console embedded above his head.

"Ten minutes to ArcLight," Todd calls, ever earnest, as the partition goes up.

"Yes, thank you, Todd."

And then there were three. Jesus, if Eliot had put money on the primary reason the night might get unbearably uncomfortable, _Quentin gets pissy apropos of nothing_ would've had the longest odds on a very long list.

But he feels Q's sudden prickliness like a glancing blow, and it wounds him more than he'd like to admit. Because it hadn't really been _nothing_ , had it? Not considering the conversation they'd had just before he'd brought an innocent bystander back to this shitshow. God only knows why he'd felt the sudden urge to vomit excerpts from his fucked-up headspace all over his utterly unprepared PA, who's here in a purely professional capacity — hefting the weight of Eliot's personal baggage would push the boundaries of even friendship, much less employment. And to make matters worse, Q had clearly felt obligated to object. To be offended for that little boy lost. Honestly, Eliot can't even blame him for being on edge.

Ah, childhood trauma. The gift that keeps on giving.

Quentin squirms in his seat, Mike shifts in his, and Eliot rolls down the window just to let some of the tension escape. Then Mike scoots until he's pressed against Eliot's side and leans over his lap to get a better view, and Eliot sighs and figures _fuck it, in for a penny_ , and reaches up to the console again _._

The panoramic sunroof slides smoothly open, and he slips off the seat into a crouch, to the sound of Mike's incredulous laughter and Quentin's groan of disbelief.

"El, come on," Quentin says, "quit messing around."

Eliot snorts. "We're _selling a_ _wholesome experience_ , remember? Might as well go full cliché." He holds out a hand to Mike, cocking his head toward the open air above. "Let's go, Lone Star."

Mike grins, laughing again. "Hey, you don't need to tell me twice," he says, linking their hands together and letting Eliot tug him from the leather seat. Then they're standing together through the sunroof, Mike's face lit with flashing neon as Eliot points out the sights on the Sunset Strip.

The whole thing is cheesy as hell — not to mention the fact that his hair is probably fucked beyond repair — but it's also… unexpectedly enjoyable. Almost laughably so, like he's playing against type, and surprising even himself with the performance. Suddenly it feels like it's been days since he last took a deep breath, one that didn't taste like inadequacy with every inhale. Just the thought makes him plant his palms on the roof of the car and pull a rolling wave of air into his lungs, thick with sunlight and tinged with the sea, and exhale like the outgoing tide.

He can see the light at Vine off in the distance, the distinctive silhouette of the Cinerama Dome taking shape between the buildings. Inside the car, Q has grown increasingly distressed.

"Seriously, El," he says, his exasperation muffled by the wind. "If one of you gets hurt…" Eliot winces, thinking of the kind of hell only Bambi can unleash, but that's not where Q's head seems to be at all. "I mean, think about how that's gonna _look_. Can you just, can you sit the fuck down, please?"

Eliot spreads his hands, a casual _What are you gonna do?_ played purely for Mike's benefit, while alarm streaks sharply through his head. Even without an injury, there are eyes and cameras everywhere. He'd almost forgotten the reason they're here in the first place — to prove that he's not a colossal fuck-up, a point which might be best illustrated by avoiding questionably safe but definitely illegal shit like precisely this.

They settle back inside as the car joins the limo line, a little windblown but none the worse for wear. A few feet away, with both feet on the floor now, Quentin is an aggressively, adorably scowly ball of barely-contained agitation.

"Really?" he says.

Shockingly, it's Mike's mouth that opens first. "Listen, I don't mean to be a liability. But it wasn't that big a deal, in the grand scheme of things. I ride wild animals every day, hangin' half out a limousine is nothing."

Quentin huffs out a breath and turns squarely to Eliot, his face hovering somewhere between incensed and incredulous. " _Really?_ "

The word is snappish and sharp and, given their present company, rude as all hell, and makes Q's mouth twitch, sheepish and unsure, almost as soon as it's been said. It also makes the space behind Eliot's ribs fill with fondness and flood with familiar warmth; Quentin, like this — caught between ferociously guarding Eliot's best interests and thoroughly frustrated that the effort is even necessary — has so much fucking _fire_ in him.

It's a flashpoint that's only outdone by Margo, easily and often, but every time he burns hot enough to boil over on Eliot's behalf, it proves to be nothing less than a humbling experience.

"No, that's my bad," he says, absently patting the seat next to Mike's knee. But he keeps his eyes fixed on Quentin, silently contrite. "I'm the one who's supposed to be behaving."

The way Quentin's eyes melt into soft sympathy, an unspoken apology all his own, is worse than almost anything else Eliot's seen so far tonight. And when the latest stop in the stop-and-go limo lurch comes with the slam of the driver's side door, Eliot mutters an _oh, thank fuck_ to himself, clenches his fists, and summons the spirit of The Destroyer.

_Keep your shit together, get through the goddamn night. Eyes on the prize, asshole._

He plasters on a smile and turns to the publicity stunt. "You ready for this?"

Mike answers with an admirably effortless shrug. "I am ready for anything."

Turns out, he's telling the truth.

As a rule, Eliot finds the red carpet routine tedious at best — one long blur of step and repeat backdrop, where you stop every few feet to answer the exact same questions for entirely different media outlets, and shift minutely for a sea of screaming photographers while the muscles in your cheeks slowly start to atrophy. If the film waiting at the end of it all turns out to be less than bearable, then what was mere tedium becomes all-out torture.

But Mike is some sort of savant. Eliot shows him the basics — how to hold his head back just far enough to avoid being blinded by the flashes, how to put his weight on one foot and pivot to the paparazzi, to get the most mileage out of every change of position — and he takes to it like a pro, posing without fidgeting, fielding questions without nerves, greeting every passing celeb with unexpected grace.

By the time he slips one hand into his pocket without disturbing the line of his jacket, Eliot can only raise an eyebrow, amused. "I think they sent me a ringer," he says, before Q steps up to put a hand on his shoulder and keep them moving down the press line.

E! is hardly the first outlet to ask about the contest — or about his winning company — but they _are_ the first to ask about the cause behind it, and Eliot suddenly finds himself with a rare moment of finding this whole production worthwhile.

"We're living in a time when arts education in schools has been, in some cases, completely decimated," he answers. "So for kids who are passionate about performing, whether that's acting or music or dance, the continuing education they need to make their dreams a reality is even further out of reach. It's amazing that they have a resource like SHADE to clear a path to a career in the performing arts."

"And this is personal for you, right?" the interviewer prompts. "You came out of a small town, but went on to art school, yourself."

For the space of a blink, Eliot can see the stage at Whiteland Community High, hear the sound of the piano from the pit — _where are you going, where are you going, can you take me with you?_

Fucking _Godspell_.

He grins to cover his grimace. "I'm a drama school dropout, so it's a case of do as I say, not as I do. But having that opportunity opened up a lot of others, so yeah, it is personal for me. And it's very personal for these kids, who will actually get the chance to do what they love for a living."

"Speaking of living," she says, turning to Mike, "for the lucky winner, you have to be having the time of your life here tonight."

Mike chuckles, naturally charming, and smiles wide for the folks at home. "It's definitely up there," he tells the mic. "But for me, and I bet everybody who entered, it was about supporting the cause more than anything. Like Eliot said, the real winners here are the kids in this program, and the bright futures they've got ahead of them."

It's perfectly poised and frighteningly genuine, couldn't have been better if he'd been coached. And that ringer comment had been a joke, but for a second, Eliot ponders the possibility that Mike is a plant.

Honestly, at this point, he wouldn't put anything past Henry.

Quentin taps his arm to get them moving again, and Eliot thanks the E! rep as they shuffle along, puts a palm between Mike's shoulder blades and leans down to his ear.

"That was surprisingly impressive."

Mike turns toward his voice without leaning back to make any space, and suddenly their faces are too close for casual conversation. "That was every speck of civic engagement I could remember from 4-H."

It startles a laugh out of Eliot, lighter than any he can recall of late. He looks up to find that they've reached the end of the press line — one objective down, about a dozen left to go. And since they're directly under the lit Cinerama sign, he figures it's the opportune time to cross another contractual obligation off the list.

"If you want a red carpet selfie for your Insta, it's probably now or never," he says, straightening. "These things have a very different vibe on the way out."

Mike grins. "I mean, who wouldn't want a selfie with a giant golf ball?"

"It's a geodesic dome," Quentin mumbles, looking caught when Eliot raises an eyebrow. "I'm just saying, it's kind of an iconic architectural landmark." He pushes a stray strand of hair behind his ear with a huff, holding out a hand. "I can take it. The picture, I mean."

But Mike is patting his pockets, mouth open, expression chagrined. "Sorry, I… I've either left my phone in the limo or back at the hotel."

Eliot blinks. "You… left your phone?"

"You know what, I think I can actually picture where it is, on the desk by the balcony door."

"Your _phone._ "

"Yeah," Mike says, sheepish. "I guess in my rush to get the night going… It's alright. We took about a billion pictures back there, there's gotta be one that's Instagram worthy. I'm just enjoying livin' in the moment."

There's an odd sort of fog floating through Eliot's head — he's so used to fans shoving screens in his face and squishing in to get that perfect shot, less concerned with actually _meeting him_ than getting the photographic proof that they had. Quentin swears his selfie smile is a painful thing to witness.

But here's someone who had filled out a form and made a donation and flown a thousand miles and change just to share his company, someone so eager to do so that he'd _forgotten his fucking phone_.

Not a publicity stunt. A _person_ , who actually wants to be here. The least Eliot can do is try to make the experience worth the effort.

Which probably does not involve wasting two hours on what is sure to be a terrible film.

"Hey," he says, turning squarely to Mike. "What do you say we get out of here?"

Mike's face brightens, but he can practically feel Q bristle at his elbow.

" _Eliot_."

"Not _that way_ ," he grinds out, " _Jesus_ , Quentin. I'm simply proposing that we spend the next couple hours having some dinner and an actual conversation, instead of sitting in silence in the dark." He raises an eyebrow at Mike. "Unless you have an objection."

"No," Mike says, shaking his head. "Dinner sounds good to me."

"Skipping out on the screening isn't exactly on the schedule, El."

Eliot rolls his eyes. "It's pseudo-science fiction about pretty boys who can teleport, I already hated this movie back when it was called _Jumper_." He gives Quentin a look, willing him to read it as easily as he does everything else Eliot-related. "We grab a bite, we make some small talk, we're back on task in time for the afterparty. No one will even notice we're gone."

Q hems and haws for a minute, looking ill enough that Eliot feels bad for asking — he's a reluctant rule breaker by nature, and with the publicity plan in play and the wrath of Margo hanging over his head, he may be well on his way to an ulcer. But there's a little voice in the back of Eliot's mind — the one that still sees Henry's words on a screen and replays Margo's warning in an endless loop —that says the hesitation means some part of Quentin can't help but expect the worst of him here. And he doesn't want to listen to it, but it just won't shut the fuck up.

"Look, I heard you, okay?" he tells Quentin, quietly. "And I'm sorry about the limo. But we're talking about a meal in a public place, Q, there's only so far even I can fuck that up."

Quentin's shoulders slump, his eyes softening with some dawning realization. "I wasn't saying… That's not what I'm worried about."

Eliot nods, with something like a smile that dies halfway up his cheeks — Quentin and all his empathy, forever trying to cushion the blow, even when the truth can do nothing but hurt.

"And _I'm_ saying that there's no reason to worry at all," Eliot counters. "I'll be a good boy. Cross my heart."

Realistically, he doesn't need to ask for permission. He could easily pull rank and overrule Q on this, disregard the value of his input, by virtue of nothing but being the boss. But that's never been the way they work, not once in nearly four years, which is why they work so well together, in almost every sense of the word.

Quentin holds his eyes while Eliot holds his breath. Then he nods, almost imperceptibly.

"Okay," he says, tapping out what Eliot can only assume is a text telling Todd to come back with the car. "But there's no way we're getting through this crowd the way we came, so. We can head in and duck out the side door."

He obviously means that there's no way they'd get through the crowd unnoticed, but the fact that it goes unsaid is a win Eliot will gladly take at the moment. "Sounds like a plan." He reaches out to take Mike by the wrist and guide him gently to his side. "And while you've got your phone handy, let's just grab that selfie, shall we?"

Quentin huffs out his impatience, pushed about as far as he will go, and Eliot feels a rush of affection for his sulky little face.

"Come on, Q," he says, and winks. "Do it for the 'gram."

Image issues aside, Eliot's particular brand of celebrity is fairly low-key by industry standards. He doesn't spend every errand and outing surrounded by black-clad security, he doesn't use riders to make ridiculous demands for bowls of blue M&Ms and obscure brands of bottled water. He definitely doesn't drop his name to jump the line for reservations at whatever splashy hot spot Hollywood society has deemed the must-eat of the moment, and he damn sure isn't about to start now.

Dropping _Margo's_ , on the other hand, is entirely fair game. Especially when it's just this once.

Hedge is a trendy farm-to-table fixture on Melrose, with a seasonal menu of locally sourced meat and sustainably caught fish and produce grown entirely in the head chef's massive garden. Hoberman designs every dish on the plant-heavy menu himself, and has a Michelin star to show for his trouble.

Fortunately, he also has a massive thing for Eliot's BFF.

And since desperate times call for desperately vague promises to put in a good word, Eliot can walk through the restaurant, packed even on a Tuesday, and only feel bad in passing. It isn't his fault if Josh Hoberman — a man so obsessed with his own heirloom tomatoes that he makes all his ketchup in house — actually thinks he stands a chance in hell with Margo Hanson, but it _does_ prove that no good ever comes from making out with masked strangers who offer you edibles at James Franco's Halloween Spectacular.

Still, it's a very good table.

Mike scans the menu and shifts in his seat, and Eliot leans forward to put him out of his misery.

"Pay no attention to the prices behind the curtain," he says. "Your grand prize package is all-inclusive, even the spontaneous dining."

"Good to know," Mike answers on a laugh, though he still looks a little uncomfortable.

The selections all sound appropriately pretentious for L.A. haute cuisine — maybe it isn't just the numbers that aren't computing. But their server comes over to run down the specials and ask for their drink orders, and he needs no help there, at least.

"Can I get a Maker's on the rocks with a beer back? Whatever IPA you'd recommend."

"Beer," Eliot echoes, equal parts horror and amusement — even the word is disgusting. "You are lucky you're cute."

Mike quirks an eyebrow. "Am I?"

He doesn't specify which part the question pertains to, the _lucky_ or the _cute_. Eliot smirks without answering, surprised despite himself, until pretty, patient Victoria politely clears her throat above his head.

"I'll stick with water for now," he says, thinking of Margo's rules and Quentin's reluctance and the sure-to-be-raging afterparty still to come. "Sparkling, please."

She's gone with a smile and a nod and a _coming right up_ , and he takes a sip of the still water he already has and watches Mike set his closed menu aside. Eliot has seen and heard the word _date_ often enough in the last few weeks that it's sort of lost all meaning, but it isn't until right this moment — sitting at an intimate table in a dimly-lit restaurant, across from an abstraction made flesh — that he feels its full impact, and remembers just how long it's been since he did anything of the sort.

He sets his glass down and reaches for the relative safety of small talk. "Speaking of prizes, how's the trip treating you so far?"

"I don't know," Mike answers, deliberately facetious. "First class flight, ridiculous hotel room, some light sunroof surfing. And now, fancy dinner with Eliot Waugh. It's amazing what fifty bucks will get you these days."

Eliot swallows the retort that rushes to the tip of his tongue — the _Pretty Woman_ portion of the evening has already avoided going horribly awry.

"What can I say," he offers instead, "I guess you _can_ have champagne tastes on a beer budget." The prize may have spared no expense, but the contest itself had hit low six figures by the end. And yeah, he'll work with MCI once this is all over, release some sort of official statement of gratitude to all those who participated, but he has a feeling the bad taste the motive has left in his mouth won't wash away until the check he'd written to match the grand total has cleared. "That fifty bucks will go a long way, when all is said and done. So, thank you for your generous donation."

Victoria comes back with their drinks and commits their main courses to memory — a dry-aged ribeye for Mike, with a side of sweet potatoes with honey and hazelnuts, and seared scallops on smoked carrot and zucchini puree for Eliot, drizzled in blood orange gastrique, plus crispy brussels sprouts tossed with bacon, walnuts and pickled endive and an order of Hoberman's precious roasted tomatoes for the table.

"That is… a lot of vegetables."

Eliot hums. "Well, when in Rome." He hands his menu off to Victoria and picks up his sparkling water. "I know the chef. If it grows, it's kind of his specialty."

"I will take your word for it," Mike murmurs.

He draws a finger down the side of his frosted beer glass, eyes lowered and brows drawn together, bottom lip dropped open on a breath. It's the universal sign of a _can I ask a question_ to come, and Eliot takes a long sip of his water and braces himself for the formal beginning of the night's performance.

"Tell me if I'm toeing too close the line here, but… is there a particular reason why you're supposed to _behave_?"

He doesn't actually choke, but it's a near thing.

There are times when Eliot thrives on being caught off guard, being taken by surprise. On being _pushed_. Idri had done it just about daily, never gave the same line read twice. Bambi's been doing it since the day they met, keeping him on toes so high he could walk in her heels if he had to. And Quentin… something about Quentin had caught him from the start and still surprises him every second, pushes him to want to be the person that Q seems to see.

It's fuel for the fire, from each of them, has fed every moment he's ever been at his best.

At his worst, he craves it like an addiction.

But that's from his people, his known entities — he can open his arms and what's left of his heart and at least try to take just about any hit they throw his way. For the rest of the world, standard operating procedure is to plant his feet and close his eyes and brace like hell for impact.

Maybe it's the call from Margo, or the conversation with Quentin, or the collective punches of the past few weeks, but his defenses are down and his eyes are wide open, and it's been a long time since a stranger's shoved him this far off balance. And Mike is still sitting there, watching him expectantly, completely unaware just how close he'd come to witnessing Eliot Waugh's first spit take up close and personal.

Every way he could play this already feels exhausting, like just making the effort would deplete the last shred of energy Eliot has. So he sighs, sets his glass down, and lets the truth steady him in place.

"Actually, there is," he says, settling back in his seat. "You can chalk it up to industry politics. Specifics aside, I'm up for a part in a new film project, and the audition seems to be my whole life. The producers have, shall we say, _expressed some concerns_ about how I've publicly handled myself in the past."

Mike raises both eyebrows. "Well you've got yourself a pretty public handler tonight."

Eliot shakes his head. "Q's just doing his job."

The smile that spreads across Mike's face, slow and sweet but brilliantly brazen, says that he hadn't been talking about Quentin. It sends a shock of awareness up Eliot's spine — this man from the middle of nowhere, in his open collar and quiet confidence and utterly charming everything, continues to be nothing like Eliot had expected.

Off balance is one thing, but freefall is another. He needs to find some solid ground here, a way to regain his footing, before he gets knocked flat on his ass.

"This new project," Mike says, making a move before he can, "it's something you're excited about doing, right after finishing up with the show?"

It's dizzying, these shifts to his center of gravity — all the unsaid implications are gone now, and the interest has shifted, the flash of flirtation in bright blue eyes swapped for a spark of gentle curiosity.

"I don't know about _right_ ," Eliot mutters, feeling the uncertainty press in on him again. "To tell you the truth, I don't even know how accurate _excited_ is here."

"No? What word would you use, then?"

"Uh… _terrified_ sounds about right." His own kneejerk response shakes a laugh out of his lungs. "In the way that it's always a little terrifying when the thing that you know better than anything ends and you have no idea how the next thing will begin. But I've wanted to really break into the film side for a few years now, and Margo — my manager — found this amazing script. So, while I will admit that I have set my sights _extremely_ fucking high… it's the first time people will ever see me outside of the small screen, or see me as anyone else. And I guess I'd rather do something special that kind of scares the shit out of me, than do something safe that's ultimately worthless."

A little more honesty than he'd aimed for, perhaps, but he thinks Q would be proud that he'd said it all out loud. The show's been such a series of watershed moments for television — pansexual lead character, diverse cast in every sense, first openly trans showrunner to ever win an Emmy — in some ways that no one had ever predicted it would.

But it had begun with a feeling in his gut about what it _could_ be, a rush of potential, and he'd felt the same thing at the end of Stoppard's script for _Chimera_.

"You want it to have an impact," Mike says, nodding. "Yeah, that makes sense." Then he screws up his face, cocking his head to one side. "Though I don't know how true the TV bit is. I mean, the first thing I ever saw you in was _Two Households_."

Eliot blinks, stomach lurching as the earth tilts on its axis once again.

 _Two Households_ was a black-and-white _Romeo and Juliet_ reversal about a pair of powerhouse political families in modern-day D.C. Their patriarchs band together to build an American dynasty to rival the Kennedys, by way of forcing their eldest children, who'd grown up as best friends, into an engagement that plays well in the media and polls well with voters otherwise on the fence. The problem is, one half of that equation is in love with someone else, and the other — his character, of course — is secretly anything but straight.

It'd had epic shooting delays and no budget to speak of, and such a limited release that even Eliot has only seen the final cut from a screener. He still can't grasp how enough eyes had ever been on it to score the ensemble an Independent Spirit Award.

" _Nobody_ saw that movie," he says, though it's pretty patently untrue — that role is the only reason Faye had called him in to read for _Scion_ in the first place, had convinced her that he had the chops to pull off a protagonist who took every opportunity to tarnish his father's good name. "At this point, it's the urban legend of my IMDb page."

Mike lights up with laughter, holding up his hands. "You caught me. I'm a fan of obscure indie cinema." With a sip of his bourbon, he sobers a bit, his face smoothing into something thoughtful. "It's a great movie, though, it really is. And sort of why I got so excited for _Scion_. Even in the previews, Nigel felt a little like the person Bobby could've been in another life."

And just like that, the bottom drops out from under Eliot's feet.

It's not that the connection is news to him — he's thought along the same lines, more than once, since the first time he read the _Scion_ pilot. But the deeper parallel has always been personal. Nigel was Eliot's extreme alter ego, the one who'd vowed vengeance for the sins of his father and fought tooth and nail to follow through. But Robert Sinclair was an Eliot still trapped in a cage, even one that was gilded, and he never had managed to escape.

Eliot winces out a smile, throat working, and suddenly wishes he'd ordered something stronger than water.

"Daddy issues and dicks," he says, tipping his drink, "the patron saints of my career."

Then Victoria swoops in like an angel bearing entrees and triples her tip on good timing alone. "You gentlemen need anything else?" she asks.

He downs the last of his sparkling water and listens to the ice clink at the bottom of the tumbler. _A vat of vodka,_ he wants to say. _A fucking cigarette. I'd take a time machine, if you have one handy._

To think, he could be sitting in the safety of the dark right now, watching pretty boys who can teleport.

Eliot pulls a big puff of air in through his nose and gathers all the restraint and _best behavior_ he has. "I'll have another," he says, handing off his empty glass, "thanks."

For a meat and potatoes man from somewhere in small town Texas, Mike only seems momentarily vexed by the maitake mushrooms and glossy demi-glace that accompany his steak. Then again, he'd ordered his ribeye medium rare — unlike the well-done heathens of Eliot's childhood — so small towns may have evolved since Eliot's exodus from his own.

Which is a perfect little segue of a thought, for someone looking to redirect the surprising insight of the stranger he's sharing a meal with.

"So," he starts, stumbling back to his metaphorical feet, "what's your story, back in… Brakebills, was it?"

Mike doesn't speak with his mouth full, but his hand holds on to the knife even after the bite has been cut. It sends something bittersweet and familiar racing through Eliot's head — a compound memory of chewing his food with his forearms propped on the edge of the table, a piece of his grandmother's silver clutched in each fist. He'd had to train himself out of the habit.

"My family owns a cattle ranch," Mike says. "I am a fourth-generation farmer."

Eliot can't be entirely sure, but whatever's happening between his ears may be the sound of him screaming internally. "Oh?"

Mike laughs, the sound of it self-deprecating along the edges. "Yeah, it's kind of the most Texas thing you can do. But it's also, you know… kind of _the most Texas thing you can do_."

He shakes his head, grinning into the last of the whiskey in his glass. And Eliot's smile had felt pasted on before, molded and frozen, stuck to his face with a little plastic peg, but it melts a bit now, at the corners — the feeling is complicated, but somewhere underneath all the swirling confusion, it's… _nice._ To think that there are tiny farm towns somewhere in the world that can produce proud, confident queer boys like Mike McCormick, and have those boys be equally proud to call that place home.

Victoria brings his drink back, then, giving Eliot an excuse to glance elsewhere.

"You're farm stock yourself, right?"

His answering expression miraculously stays closer to smile than grimace. "Soybeans and seed corn," he says with a nod, "courtesy of Whiteland, Indiana."

"We've got a grain supplier up that way." Mike scrubs his palm over his chin and pulls his brows together. "Uh… Rockville, I think?"

Eliot hums, feeling the word like a static shock. "John Murphy's place. He owns like half that town. Last I heard, he had a pair of bald eagles nesting somewhere on his property."

They'd gone up for a piece of equipment once, just father and son, the summer before he turned ten. His father had been focused on the farm business, but Mr. Murphy had insisted on taking Eliot through the fields to pick out the perfect pumpkin, and to the Amish store for bags of pretzels and fudge. Had taught him to tap maple syrup in a little shack at the edge of his land, and laughed while he'd scooped the sap from the tiny tin bucket with his fingers.

The pumpkin had been an orange heap of mush on the side of the road before they ever made it to the interstate. But he'd gone to bed that night dreaming before he ever fell asleep — thinking of running all the way back to Rockville to live with laughing Mr. Murphy, who had kind hands and no kids of his own — and the hope in it was bright enough to dull the switch sting that throbbed across the back of his legs.

"Do you get back there often? Whiteland, that is, not Rockville."

"God, no," Eliot scoffs, slicing a scallop cleanly in half. He has to hand it to Hoberman and his kitchen — the sear on each of them is impeccable. "Thankfully, 'the last I heard' was a hell of a long time ago."

Mike's very expression seems to stutter. "You're not in touch with your family at all?"

Swallowing, Eliot shakes his head. "On the contrary. My _family_ and I are in constant contact."

"Okay," Mike says, showing all his teeth, "I… am confused."

Eliot runs his hands over the napkin spread in his lap, just to give them something to do. "I haven't spoken to anyone from the farm in years," he says. "They reach out, when they need things. And they get exactly what they always gave me." He sniffs, shrugs, picks up his fork again. "Quentin, Margo… they're my family."

Mike sits back, slowly, one hand still wrapped around his beer. "That must be tough."

For a second, Eliot is tempted to laugh, or scream, or blow out all the breath in his body. Considering he's spent most of the night accidentally digging up things he thought he'd buried more than deep enough, things labeled memories that had become land mines during their time in the dirt, _tough_ is a bit of an understatement.

Instead, he simply tilts his head. "In what way?"

"Well, having the folks closest to you be people you employ." Mike's voice is plain, but his eyes are kind. "You never wonder whether they're in it for the right reasons?"

This time, the sound in his ears is just good-old fashioning ringing.

The words ping the oldest insecurity of the new person he'd become, stab around in his ribcage until it hurts to breathe. Bambi's place on her pedestal is never in question — the matched set of _MargoandEliot_ , joined at the soul, predates all of this and will be there whenever it ends, was his truth before he was anything that mattered. But Quentin had come with a contract, and spends some part of every day trying to write his way out of it.

It's been more than three years, and sometimes he still looks up over his wine and their nearly-finished puzzle and wonders how much of what they have had started with Quentin humoring him out of obligated necessity, how much he still thinks he has to.

If this has all been just another aspect of the job to Quentin, when it's been sort of everything to Eliot.

And none of that has anything to do with the perfectly sweet, well-meaning man seated across from him now, nor is any of it his fault. Even if every other word Mike's said so far this evening has made Eliot feel oddly exposed somehow, wrong-footed and stripped bare and left without defenses… something he hasn't felt since he first met Quentin Coldwater.

Unearthed trauma aside, it's surprising. Intriguing. The same shade of terrifying he'd talked about before.

But Mike is a moot point, in the grand scheme of things. Nothing more than pleasant, present company, who'll be just another memory to lay to rest this time tomorrow. For now, Eliot is more than capable of spinning this into something charming and trivial and completely unaffected, and making the rest of this an exercise in effortless redirection. Of showing Mike an exciting, enjoyable, entirely innocent good time, then sending him happily on his way.

 _Keep your shit together_ , Margo hisses in his head. _Get through the goddamn night._

So he smiles and sips his fresh sparkling water, sidestepping as smoothly as he can with the ground still taking shape beneath him.

"I was once stuck in an elevator with Kanye West and the least bearable half of the _Entourage_ ensemble," he says, spearing another scallop. "Trust me, _tough_ is a relative concept."

"There's actual seats inside," Todd says, polite but pointed, for probably the third time this hour. "And I think they're pretty comfortable. You know, if you wanted. To sit."

Laid out on his back across the hood of the limo, Quentin sighs at the night sky above. "I'm good."

"It's just… I mean, it's a rental —"

"It's _fine_ , Todd," Quentin groans. "I'm not gonna damage the goddamn car."

Todd makes a helpless noise and mumbles out an _okay_ and climbs back inside to do… whatever it is he does while he waits for Eliot. And Quentin might feel bad about it, under any other circumstances. If he weren't too preoccupied with his own spiraling thoughts to give much of a shit.

He can't figure out how one impromptu dinner between two perfect strangers could last the better part of three hours. Not even when one of them is Eliot.

Honestly, he still can't understand why this is even happening. He'd recorded the sides El had sent as his official hat-in-the-ring audition for _Chimera_ — a breathtaking mid-film monologue Cain has with his own reflection, addressed to the monster in his head — and it was legitimately the most electrifying read he's seen from Eliot… _ever_. The idea that being brilliant in this role might not be enough, that El has to prove his personal life is worthy of playing this part, is frustrating as all hell.

It makes no _sense._ For all that they're doing this to shore up Eliot's image, his record is clean, and now so is he — he'd given up doing anything hard core years ago, not long after Quentin had first told how James had lost the battle with his own drug demons, in fact. And as for the rest… well, there hasn't been a headline-worthy hookup situation in a while.

Quentin had fallen down the rabbit hole of rumors early on, and El had addressed them with every shred of his shameless honesty. _Come now, Quentin, you really shouldn't believe everything you read._ Quentin had snorted and shoved his hands in his pockets, morbidly curious. _So… you and Margo_ didn't _tag team Timothée Chalamet in the bathroom at Elton John's Oscar party?_ he'd asked, and watched Eliot cock his head. _No, that one's true,_ he'd said. _Variety tends to be shockingly accurate._

There'd been a couple of off-and-on things between seasons, and that one Lee Pace situation, and the loaded moment with Idri he'd once walked in on in wardrobe. _I don't fuck where I eat, Q,_ Eliot had told him, after. _Not_ literally _, I mean, you haven't lived until you've bent somebody over a counter. But cast, crew. Craft services. Categorically off limits. Nobody needs that kind of drama._ And Quentin had zero legs to stand on there — he'd lost his virginity to snarky-sweet Arielle Sullivan, who'd played the young Winter's Doe Martin finds beyond The Flying Forest — but Idri hadn't been an issue again.

There'd been Sebastian, London born and LAMDA trained, a dozen years El's senior, who'd strung him along for almost a year and then left him for a freshly out former flame the morning after he'd won his first BAFTA. Quentin had brought the wine to Eliot, that night — they'd sat in the sand behind the sago palms and passed the bottle back and forth between them, Quentin's heart hurting for him, while El stared out at the surf in that goddamn paisley shirt and seemed to feel nothing at all. _How are you not, like…_ raging _right now?_ he'd asked, shaking his head when Eliot actually managed to smile. _Someone offered him the thing he wanted most in the world, Q, I can't quite hate him for taking it. But you can, if it helps._

What had _helped_ was walking into Seb's penthouse the next day to pack up El's things and tossing an Oscar in the toilet before he'd walked out, but that night they'd just polished off the bottle, and opened another, and Quentin had watched him and wondered how anyone could have Eliot and ever want anything else.

And there'd been nothing serious, _no one_ serious, since.

The way Eliot had looked earlier, though, smiling at Mike under the glow of the Cinerama marquee, impressed and intrigued and… _entranced_ , or something… Quentin's never seen that from him before.

But hey, if he ever needs a reminder, it's immortalized in the image on his fucking phone.

And speaking of.

He has to wrench to one side to wrestle it out of his pocket, guiltily wincing when he feels the hood give a bit under his weight.

Sorry, Todd.

Margo's name flashes at him from the screen, and he swipes hastily to answer before her patience with the ringing on her side runs out. "Hey."

"That's what you led with?" she snaps. "I expected a sit rep over an hour ago. How's our boy doing?"

There's a little zip of pride up his spine at her choice of words — that she so willingly shares her soulmate with him is thrilling, even after all this time.

"Uh, he's good," Quentin mumbles, "as far as I know." He hears his mistake as soon as he says it — somewhere, there exists a worse possible answer, but he can't think of one at the moment.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean, Quentin? The whole point of you is to know all the things."

"No, it's, I'm sure that he's fine. We just had, um, an unplanned stop that might be a bit of a problem?" He takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself, but it only gives every word he's swallowed over the course of the night an easy path to escape. "The pickup went well, rogue paparazzi aside, and the ride over was… mostly uneventful. But something _happened_ while they were walking the carpet, Margo. I was right there, the whole time, and I just, I _missed it_. But whatever it was, it sent him completely off script." He pauses, briefly, to breathe again, then says the thing he's been choking down hardest. "And this guy, Mike, he's just… he's kind of obviously El's type."

"Honey, you wouldn't know El's type if it reached out and grabbed you by the dick. Which is ironic, considering." She sighs, and the part of him that's trying desperately to decipher what the hell she's talking about gets distracted by the mental picture of her patent pending eye-roll of epic exhaustion. " _Okay_. Pause, rewind, answer me in five words or less. Where is Eliot right this second?"

His head lolls listlessly toward the restaurant. "Hedge," he says, counting. "On Melrose. With Mike."

Every wrath-fueled reaction he'd been dreading is defused by her bright burst of laughter.

" _Oh my god_ ," she chokes out, almost painfully. "You can't give me that level of meltdown, Quentin, my damage control status goes straight to DEFCON 1." Her amusement tapers off, leaving behind a tone he knows better, the one that's full of wry, wicked warning. "Calm your tits, Coldwater. They fucked off to dinner, not the nearest no-tell motel. And as long as you keep him from making this kid's dick dessert, there won't be any problem at all. The afterparty's the last item on the agenda, right?"

Quentin closes his eyes, deflated. "Yep."

"Good. Get him there, get him home, so I can get him this goddamn part. Then Charlie and his golden ticket get on a plane back to bumfuck, wherever, and we can all get on with our lives. Otherwise, call me if anybody needs bail."

The call cuts out, which is… oddly comforting. Business as usual for Margo probably means the world isn't ending, and the thought is enough to ease his anxiety.

She's right. This is fine.

Then his eyes open, and the first thing they land on is Eliot and Mike — exchanging animated words as they make their way over to the car, walking close enough that their arms brush with every step — and he can feel himself start to spiral all over again.

Eliot hitches his approach when he notices Quentin, and a baffled smile breaks across his face, shaky on each side, like he's trying to hold it in and failing.

"Just when I thought I was all surprised out," he says, "I come back to a human hood ornament. You okay there, Q?"

Quentin scrambles off the car and unsteadily to his feet, ducking his head — he can already feel the heat flaming in his cheeks. "It's fine. I'm fine. You were just… in there awhile."

Which is fine.

"Yeah, dessert was a bit of a production."

"That last stretch wasn't even us," Mike chimes in, hooking a thumb back toward Hedge. "The chef caught up while we were coming through the bar and spent like twenty minutes talking about _tomatoes_?"

It gets a laugh out of Eliot — not the deep, rolling chuckle he tends to use in public, but the big, brash fit of snorting giggles he never can control in private. His _real_ laugh, the one that scrunches up his nose and shuts his eyes so tight they crinkle at the corners.

He leans into Mike while he does it, and for a fraction of a second, Quentin half hopes that he's had one too many. But no — El's eyes had been fixed and clear, his voice well within normal range. Drunk Eliot goes glassy and unfocused and tends to tick up an octave or two.

No, this is just… Eliot. Actually enjoying himself. With Mike.

Which is _fine_.

El's laughter dies down, and he straightens up and steps closer. "Sorry. We're ready, I swear."

Todd has come around to open the door to the back, probably while Quentin was gritting his teeth — all the _we_ and _us_ language is seriously starting to grate.

"Great," he mutters. "Next stop, Neitherlands."

They all kind of converge at the side of the car at the same time, and Eliot reaches out to touch his arm.

"It's a pretty short ride to the club. Why don't you just sit up front for this one?"

Quentin blinks. "Up front," he repeats, flat. "With _Todd_."

Eliot shrugs and spreads his hands, and just over his shoulder, Mike shoots Quentin a smile that's all the more maddening for its total lack of malice. "No worries," he says, with an honest-to-god wink, "I won't do anything you wouldn't do."

Which is… not particularly reassuring.

El doesn't even wait for an answer, just ducks inside after his date, and Todd closes the two of them into the back.

Quentin sighs at the sky and gets into the passenger seat, the tinted partition a taunting shadow in his peripheral vision. _It's one night,_ he tries to tell himself, though it sounds smaller and less sure than he'd hoped. _This is completely fucking fine._

They just have to get through the next few hours. Then El goes home, and Mike goes away, and their lives go back to normal… for however long he has, before this all blows up in his face.

Eliot's had his share of unfortunate morning afters, but this one is next level.

He's still sprawled, face down and fully dressed, on a king-sized sea of Egyptian cotton, when the wake-up call comes — someone systematically yanking open every blackout panel hung along both walls of windows.

"What the ever-loving _fuck_ , Eliot?"

 _Someone_ being Bambi, of course, and oh right — he may or may not have texted her at three this morning with _BITCH, I'M GOING TO TEXAS_.

Rolling over, he scrubs blearily at his eyes, and his hand comes back smudged in last night's liner. Which, _fuck_. It's never a good sign when whatever had happened the night before means he couldn't even manage a pre-pass out makeup wipe.

Oh god, he's in one of those horrible retreads of _The Hangover_. And that had been horrible enough on its own.

He groans by way of greeting, shoving himself into a sitting position. "I gather we're past the 'good morning, sunshine' portion of the proceedings."

"No shit," she snarls, holding her phone high. "Tell me this was a drunk text."

"Since you bribed all the Neitherlands bartenders and had Quentin confiscate my flask, let's assume you already know the answer to that."

Even so, the last of the evening is a bit of a blur. He remembers doing a few laps worth of introductions and image-friendly Instagram updates, and dancing to DJ Hansel's godawful dubstep, and yeah, doing a shot or five from a passing tray at the sight of Quentin planted at the bar and practically draped in Poppy fucking Kline.

He'd taken two steps toward Q, either to check on him like a good friend would or to call dibs on him like a goddamn child, and Mike had caught his hand and tugged him back, drawn his focus down to bright blue eyes.

 _I just wanted to thank you, Eliot,_ he'd said. _You are a hell of a guy, and this whole thing has been… like living in a different world. I can't believe I'm going back to Brakebills already._ And he'd smiled, sure and sweet and just the slightest bit suggestive. _'Course, you could always come with me._

Which was exactly the kind of reckless, self-indulgent shit he was specifically supposed to be avoiding. But Eliot had glanced back to the bar, and both Quentin and Poppy had been gone, and if the fun police had called it quits to hook up with the horrible Fuzzbeat flunky who hates him, then all bets were just fucking off, weren't they?

So he'd turned back to Mike, and said _yeah, okay_ in a way that was overly firm and full of false bravado, and watched his face flood with shock. _Wha— are you serious?_ he'd asked, and Eliot had put his hands on his arms and rolled his eyes, trying to breathe through the flare of panic lighting up every one of his senses. _Don't act so surprised_ , he'd said. _I_ was _promised a second date Stetson._

He's pretty sure they'd toasted to that with the signature _Travelers_ cocktail of the evening, which is right around the time things got fairly fuzzy.

"What," Margo says now, while he smears his hands down his face, "the dick was so good you're gonna follow it home?"

He groans again, the sound of it muffled by the palms pressed flat to his mouth, then drops his hands to look her square in the eye. "I didn't fuck him, Bambi."

And he doesn't actually think Q had gone home with Poppy, either — not only had someone taken off his shoes and hung his jacket over the back of the chaise, there's a pitcher of water and some Advil in a little dish sitting on his nightstand, next to his phone on its wireless charger, and none of that would ever come courtesy of fucking _Todd_. But Quentin hadn't exactly stuck around, so who knows what had happened after he'd finished playing babysitter.

Margo is still spitting fire mid riot act, though she _has_ added pacing as a fun twist.

The masochist in him likes to watch her when she's like this — this thing that's a nervous tick for most people is just another part of the performance for her, measured and smooth, almost predatory.

His little lioness. The Destroyer, prowling at the bars.

"Explain this to me, El. Because we are usually on the same page with our shit, but I don't even know what book you're in right now."

"At the moment? A decidedly blank one." He shakes his head, lacing his fingers together over his lap. But the more he thinks about Brakebills, the more it makes sense to him, somehow — drunk text or not, there's an open door here, and all he has to do is go through it. "I can't just sit here waiting for someone to tell me whether or not I still have a career. I submitted my tape, I talked to the suits, I let Henry pimp me out to the masses for the sake of good publicity. It's out of my hands now. And I think I could use some time away."

"That's what Ibiza is for," Margo says, "pick a beach and I'll grab my bikini. But you're not talking _getaway_ , you're talking walkabout in a red state." She throws up one manicured hand, tossing her phone to the bed beside his thigh. "I mean, _Texas?_ "

He hunches his shoulders, irrationally defensive. "I've… been to Texas."

"You've been to _Austin_ ," she scoffs. "Austin isn't Texas, Eliot, it's the shiny mirage of baby liberals and breakfast tacos you see right before you die in the goddamn desert."

And he has to laugh, because she's utterly ridiculous, and he loves her beyond reason, and he's forever in awe that she loves him exactly this way — enough to fight for him no matter what, even if it means they end up fighting with each other.

She climbs into his big bed in bare feet, crawls close enough that she can sit with her knees kissing his.

"What are you doing, El? This was supposed to be one hoop we had to jump through, and you're making it a motherfucking three-ring circus."

He snorts. "Insert _Greatest Showman_ pun here." But she puts one hand over both of his, tiny and golden, and between the blind date that had left him an emotional live wire and the raincloud of uncertainty that's shadowed him for weeks, he wants nothing more than to curl up in her lap and hide from the world.

"Remember how relentless we were when we first got to L.A.? Auditions, commercials, fucking stand-in gigs, whatever work you could get me. Then I spent this huge chunk of time on _Two Households_ , and on the show eight months out of every year after that…" He runs his tongue over his lower lip. Even reliving it in his head is exhausting. "Normal people would take a beat in between, you know? Sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor. But I had workshops, and theater runs, and a BBC miniseries that still hasn't seen the light of day."

Her hand squeezes down, keeping him from spinning wildly out of frame. "Baby, you don't need to tell me that you're a goddamn machine."

He laughs without humor, and the taste of it is bitter on his tongue. "I know," he says, thick. "I know I don't. That's my point. There's a _reason_ I'm a workaholic, Margo, I work because my life _doesn't_. And this is the first time I've stood still long enough to see it."

She inhales, sharp, and for a split second, he feels the bite of her fingernails in his skin.

"My life doesn't work," Eliot echoes, almost airy now. "No amount of excess or acclaim or random trappings of celebrity has ever managed to fix that. But as long as I'm locked in this holding pattern that's completely out of my control, I might as well do it somewhere I can breathe. Where I can reset, maybe get my head right. Because it feels like something is _missing,_ right now. Like, fundamentally absent. And I'm not sure what it is, but I think I need to go find it."

Her gaze stays fixed on his face, unwavering and unaffected, but he can see her throat working, and her thumb strokes soothingly along the back of his hand.

"And where does whatshisname fit into all this?"

He thinks of last night's loaded conversation. Of Mike shining a spotlight into the deepest, darkest parts of him, where all his shipwrecks lie, and dredging up pieces of things simply caught in their vortex and dragged under as they went down.

"I honestly have no idea," he says. "But I think I need to find that, too."

She sniffs, just once, reaching up to swipe at his face with her fingertips, and he tells himself it's just the lingering liner she's after.

"So you finally decide to grow a clit and stop living on drive-by dick alone," she says, "and you're gonna waste your big boy epiphany on the wrong fucking person."

"What can I say? I'm exploring the radical notion of wanting things I can actually have."

Margo arches a perfectly threaded brow. "You really think Coldwater would say no to anything you ever wanted?"

It stops him short for a second, steals his breath — he's never put a name to anything, where Quentin is concerned. Not that he'd been harboring any delusions about whether or not she'd known; it's Margo, she knows everything. She's just never bothered to call him out on it before.

But something about the words coming from someone else's mouth, about the reality of hearing them out loud, makes him realize exactly how impossible it sounds.

"Given the paycheck and the power imbalance and the very definition of _personal assistant_ … I think he's never really had a choice." He swallows, hard, flips one hand over to slip his palm into hers. "And I may not have much practical experience at building real relationships, Bambi, but I'm fairly sure that Stockholm Syndrome is a shaky foundation."

She throws up her free hand. "So you bulldoze that shit and build something from scratch."

"Sure," he says flatly. "Perhaps atop the ashes of his last relationship. You know, the one I sort of singlehandedly demolished."

Her head drops back on her shoulders, and she groans her frustration to the ceiling above. "You really want to die on that hill, you can take this metaphor with you."

Eliot refrains from stating the rest of the obvious — that he's pretty much a mess, that he's very much a man, that it's highly doubtful Q is up for either — but he's almost positive she can read it all over his face.

"Besides," he says instead, "I was never meant to keep him, remember? He has bigger and better things to do than me."

She snorts out something like a laugh, incredulous. "El, come on."

"Margo." He shakes his head and squeezes her hand in his, swallows down the biggest, sharpest reason — that losing Quentin any way but the one foregone from the beginning might be the blow that finally broke him for good. "I can't."

And his Bambi just looks at him, for a long, loaded moment, with those bottomless eyes that stare straight through every shred of his bullshit. Then she sighs, picks up her phone, and starts tapping out texts.

"What… exactly is happening right now?" he asks, because he knows her Get Shit Done face when he sees it.

"The fuck do you think is happening, Eliot? I'm trying to figure out how to get us to Backwater, Texas in a way that won't make me instantly wish for death."

He cracks a smile. Just a small one. "Brakebills."

" _Whatever_."

He chuckles this time. Then he actually processes what she'd just said.

"Wait, you're… are you seriously planning to come with me?"

The glare that gets has shriveled the balls of lesser men. "Don't ask dumb questions."

His tiny smile becomes an all-out grin, of gratitude and adoration and blinding relief, and she rolls her eyes before he can do something truly tragic like _cry_.

"Okay," she says, turning her attention squarely to her screen, "all this talk about Austin and actual human emotion has made me hungrier than ScarJo on the hunt for an Academy Award. So I'm gonna take care of Team Quarterlife Crisis, and you're gonna go make me a motherfucking breakfast taco."

The throb in his chest fades back to a dull ache, contained in the Quentin-shaped place where it's always lived, and he rocks forward to press his lips to her hairline, trots out his best Texas twang, and lets his oldest love flood the rest of the space.

"Yes ma'am."

Quentin doesn't so much storm the MCI office as talk Emily at reception into letting him in — she's always had a strange soft spot for him, in her snappy, standoffish way, and whatever the fallout of this visit, he still needs to get his parking validated — but he does get the satisfaction of throwing Alice's frosted door open and rushing into her office unannounced.

A small victory, yeah. But he hasn't heard from Eliot yet today, so he'll take whatever win he can get.

What he's _also_ gotten is a string of angry _you had ONE JOB_ texts from Margo at barely six this morning… and an email from Alice, from her work address to his, on preliminary publicity logistics for a trip to Brakebills, Texas.

He takes a deep breath, tosses the printout on her desk, and says "Hi, um, you want to tell me what the hell this is?"

Which is… fairly pathetic, as Margo impressions go. But he figures the part where he'd stormed in unannounced probably offsets the part where he'd actually started with _hi_.

Except Alice crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow, looking for all the world like the Irene clone she's fast becoming — because Alice Quinn doesn't do anything halfway — and every shred of Big Destroyer Energy leaves him in a rush.

Quentin swipes a hand over his mouth, shoves at the hair that's escaped its tie to hang limply in his face.

"Sorry, I. It's… been a long day."

He almost laughs at that, since it's like nine a.m., but he hasn't slept and he's half-delirious and the afterparty had been… _a lot._ He'd navigated the Neitherlands labyrinth-like levels without falling into one of the fountain-shaped water features this time. He'd endured the music and the smoke machine and the small talk with Skye, the shy, sweet girl who'd succeeded him as Irene's assistant and somehow survived it for more than three fucking years. He'd put up with Poppy's continued complaints about the depiction of dragons in the _Fillory_ films — seriously, what kind of magical all-access press pass does she _have?_ — even as she'd practically climbed into his lap in the process. He'd even managed to keep one eye on Eliot, and Mike by extension, as they'd made the rounds, smiling for selfies on Eliot's phone and wading into the throng on the dance floor.

He'd done all of it, for what felt like hours, until the combination of Poppy pawing at his hair while Eliot leaned into Mike and looked into Mike's eyes and let Mike lead him to a corner away from the crowd had sent him stumbling toward the nearest men's room.

And yeah, it pretty much flew in the face of the entire reason he was even there. But he'd been gone for all of five minutes, ten at the most — okay, maybe more like fifteen — and by the time he'd returned, Eliot had gone from stone-cold sober to slightly past tipsy, in that incandescent _everything's fine and nothing hurts_ place he tended to hit right before the next round made him messy as hell.

 _Quentin!_ he'd called, clear across the club, with his hand high and his smile sun-bright, and Quentin had had to herd him out to the limo with Mike on their heels, get Mike back to his hotel and Eliot home and in bed — muttering something about Chatwin's Torrent while Quentin slipped off his shoes — and himself to a place where his brain could stop screaming.

Not that he'd really managed that last one.

So yeah, it's been a long goddamn day, and he hasn't been to sleep, and now there's… whatever the fuck _this_ is about.

He drops into the chair on his side of Alice's desk. "How is this even… just, walk me through this, because I'm, I am _lost_ here."

She folds her hands on the glass expanse of her desktop, clearly annoyed but coolly professional. "I don't know what else to tell you, Quentin," she says. "It's not as if we have a whole lot of time, or a whole lot of ways to play this. And I doubt anybody would buy that Eliot Waugh is taking some sort of _sabbatical_ in small town Texas. So… I say we sell it as a humbling experience. You know, a… a return to his modest roots. He _was_ raised on a farm."

"Yeah, and he dies a little every time anyone brings it up," Quentin mutters, shaking his head at the skepticism that twists along the tight line of her lips. "You can see it in his eyes, Alice, not even Eliot's good enough to act that away. Jesus, this was supposed to be _over_."

She snorts. "You say that as if I disagree with how this will probably play. It isn't exactly a win for me either."

"Okay, then, then why are we even talking about this?" He thinks back to the other night on the patio, and Eliot's resigned thoughts on Alice's publicity strategies. Maybe, if El knows Alice isn't completely on board with this particular plan, he won't agree to actually go through with it. "I mean, if the studio wasn't sold on the whole date song and dance, what's a trip to _Texas_ really gonna do?"

But by the time he's finished talking the ice in her face has thawed, and it's left behind an expression he's seen too many times before, the one that means she's just had some dawning realization and has to spell it out for him through her own annoyance.

"Q," she says, careful and awkward, and it must be bad, because she hasn't called him that in forever, "this wasn't my call. Eliot… he _asked_ for this."

It's almost impressive, how normal he sounds, with his throat closing and his hands shaking and his vision whiting out at the edges.

"What?"

"Margo's been breathing down my neck about how to spin it since seven this morning." She flicks through her phone and flips it in her fingers so he can see the screen, but he can't imagine trying to read the tiny text when even the shape of her hand is fuzzy at the moment. "I'm trying to work out how to either keep it under wraps or make it look good. But Eliot's the one who wants to go."

"Oh," he says, as hollowed out as he feels. The thought pings around in his skull for a second — Eliot _wants_ to go. To Brakebills. With Mike. "Right."

This is.

Fine.

"Realistically…" For a second he thinks she'll say something else about the spin of it all, and he'll have to physically stop himself from throwing up on her desk. But her face is even softer now — distinctly uncomfortable but strangely sympathetic, maybe even a little sad for him. "How else did you think this would end? You couldn't be his pet project forever, Q, it was only a matter of time before he found something shiny and new. I'm amazed that it took this long."

He's tempted to laugh, the sound already horrible in his head, since it hadn't really taken long at all — one dinner and one party and one trip down the red carpet, all linked by a limo in between. It _would_ be laughable, unbelievable, even, if he didn't know Eliot. If he were anyone else but the boy Eliot Waugh had hired on the spot in the time it took for his manager to finish a phone call, when he'd barely said two intelligible words.

Margo had played along easily enough, been about as pleasant as she ever gets, but her voice had carried on his way out. _For fuck's sake, El, he's not_ that _cute._

"Quentin —"

"I get it, okay?" he says, a shade too sharp. _You had one job._ "The irony is not lost on me."

That Alice doesn't seem to be wringing every ounce of pleasure she possibly can from this is confounding, to him, since it's essentially an _I told you so_. Since it's exactly what had put the final nail in their relationship.

She'd had her grand plan for his career. For their life. Trade on the Quinn name — hers up-and-coming, Genji's well-established — to get him a cast PA gig he could use as a foot in the door at _Scion_ , and score first crack at any assistant position that opened up in the writer's room. But it wasn't just that he'd let two openings come and go along the way, including one for Faye Queen herself. It wasn't even that he'd put his work for Eliot first, that his writing had come in a close second, that Alice had gotten whatever was left. It was the fact that his work for Eliot had become work _with_ Eliot — _them_ working, together — until it wasn't really work at all. Just Eliot, period, the axis his whole world revolved around.

And for all that he hates the way she's handled things with Eliot since — as if the fault lies with him, and not the shadow in his shape — he can't help but wonder how hard healing must have been, when El is a wound she has to constantly reopen.

But she _had_ told him so, after every late night, during every interruption, in the throes of every ugly argument. At their worst, the night they'd ended for good, her final words of warning had lost all their bitterness. _You keep giving him everything_ , she'd said, somber _, and there'll be nothing left of you after._

She'd told him, time and time again. And his brain and his gut and little hope-filled heart just… hadn't believed her.

He still doesn't. Not entirely.

But Eliot's the one who wants to go.

"Um, thanks," he mumbles, gathering the sheets of paper he'd strewn over her desk and climbing to his feet. "I'll just…"

Her voice reaches out as he steps away, heavy and resigned. "For what it's worth… I'm sorry, Quentin."

Everything in him wants to keep his eyes averted, make his escape without having to see the condolence he hears so clearly. But his eyes cut over anyway, take in the pinched strain in her otherwise even expression, the way she's not quite sure how to arrange her features for this. He'd pointed it out once, years ago. How, in some strange way, they balanced, her control and his lack thereof — a PR-ready poker face that kept almost everything in check, and a camera-friendly canvas that couldn't hide a thing, no matter how hard he tried.

It had been a running joke between them, until the first time she'd seen him with Eliot.

Still, he'd thought this was what love looked like for years. He almost wishes he didn't know better.

He'd put Eliot's phone on the charger just before he left this morning. And when he'd turned back to where he was sprawled on his stomach across the bed, he'd pressed a hand between El's shoulder blades and heard the music of his muffled hum, the faraway words he'd mumbled into the mattress. _Gonna miss you_ , _when you're gone._

"Yeah," he says now — out loud, because he owes her that much, at least. "Me, too."

Quietly, he sees himself out.

The front entrance at Quentin's is half security measure and half secret garden — bushes set along a freeform flagstone path, nestled in grass and lined with lights, leading to a warm wooden door set in a stucco archway with flowering planters on either side, and an ivy-twined iron fence stretched between several square pillars to frame the lush green courtyard beyond.

For Eliot, that arch has always seemed transportive, _transformative_ , like stepping through a portal to a place where the weight of the world fell away, and he was the best possible version of himself. And usually, he'd cross that threshold and keep on going — past the trickling stone fountain and the fragrant fruit trees — to the intricately-carved entrance to Q's Spanish cottage, where he'd stand under the glow of the lantern, take out his very own key, and quietly let himself in.

But this visit comes on the heels of a hell of a day. After the dull headache of hangover and the scramble to make travel arrangements — not to mention the aftermath of opening an emotional vein and bleeding his baggage all over Margo — he'd gone for a walk down his own stretch of sand to call Quentin, who just… hadn't answered.

He's trying to recall the last time that happened, and he's pretty sure the answer is never. At least not without a frantic callback about five seconds later, with an apology and an explanation in lieu of a hello. But it's been a couple hours now, and all three texts he'd sent — two test-the-waters throwaways and one slightly-panicked _seriously, are you alive over there?_ — have gone not only unanswered but unread. And yeah, he's still holding out hope that the sudden radio silence means Quentin is lost in his own land of make believe, finally fighting with the last of _The Alchemy League_. But there's also the mutinous voice in the back of his mind, the sound of ever-present fear, that after this last round of cleaning up his mess, Q has finally hit his limit. That, between the drive and the detour and the drinks that went down too easy, Eliot has pushed a step too far.

So tonight, hours earlier than is their norm, he stands on the doorstep with a frankly phenomenal bottle of Bordeaux, rings the bell like a normal person who does not, in fact, live here, and waits to be granted entry like the guest he very much is, the key burning a hole in his pocket.

He remembers the first time he'd ever used it, attempting to cull the strange flutter in his stomach as he stepped inside by calling out his best Ricky-style _Honey, I'm home_. The backfire had been epic and immediate — the flutter had become a hurricane, swirling with all the ways that would never be true, Q had frozen in place halfway to the kitchen, the look on his face unreadable but unsettling, and Eliot had never done it again.

And just when he thinks he might be overthinking all of this, the door swings open to Quentin's equally indecipherable expression.

"Hey," he says, voice as blank as his face.

"Hey," Eliot answers, far too bright, and holds up the Bordeaux just because it's there. "You up for some company?"

Q doesn't so much let him in as wander away, crossing his arms and fading back without a word, and Eliot steps inside and closes the door behind him. He'd been prepared for either anxious, overthinking Quentin or hyper focused writing Quentin, both of whom are served well by wine and distraction. And there's always the possibility of dazed and detached Quentin, too deep in his own head, who needs food and familiarity to break out of his fugue state. Which is why, although it doesn't happen often, Eliot tends to keep at least a couple bland, starchy staples stocked in Q's cabinets — mashed potatoes, mac and cheese.

But this Quentin is none of those. He doesn't recognize this Quentin at all.

He follows Q's shadow into the living room, where he's standing stiffly beside the sofa. "I tried calling," Eliot says, shifting on his feet like there's a fault line lying just beneath. "I'd forgotten what your outgoing message actually sounds like."

"Yeah, uh," Quentin says, and Eliot blinks, if only because Q's responses to things like that tend to start with _sorry_ , "I've been… busy. I don't even know where my phone is."

Eliot steps forward to set the bottle of Bordeaux on the coffee table, then pivots to Q's favorite chair. The radio silence is still an anomaly, but this much, at least, is textbook.

He pulls the phone from the sliver of space where it's wedged between the arm and the seat — where it always ends up when Quentin's been writing, wriggled free from his pocket at some point during the day while he moved from one ridiculous position to another — and takes his first full breath since he stepped through the front door, feeling the safety of familiar ground.

"I guess last night went well."

The edge in Q's voice frays along every one of Eliot's nerves, making him freeze momentarily before he can stand up straight again. He holds the phone out face up, motion making the screen come to life — four missed calls, and a handful of message notifications — but Quentin just stands there with his arms crossed, staring somewhere below Eliot's sightline.

Sighing, Eliot sets the phone on the little table next to the chair, the table he'd brought back from a market in Morocco because it had made him think of Q's ridiculous coffee habit. "About that," he says, as his own phone pings in his pocket. "I know things didn't exactly go according to plan."

"Oh?" Quentin raises an eyebrow. "Which part?"

The thing is, Eliot is used to Quentin being bothered. He's seen Quentin bitchy and pissy and irritable, seen him stressed the fuck out, seen him annoyed at the most random things. But he's never seen Quentin _angry_ , full stop, and that's what's happening here. This is Quentin, angry, and trying like hell to hide it — simmering clipped and closed off while he boils beneath the surface, a parody of cool and calm and somewhat collected.

This is Quentin _acting_.

And just like that, the earth is quaking again. So is the phone at his hip.

Normally, this is when he'd say something smarmy and self-deprecating — _how much time do you have_ or _hey, fuck-ups gonna fuck up_ or _can I just say 'my life' and move on_ — but something about seeing Quentin wound so tight just won't let him brush this off.

"Take your pick," he says. "There was the dumb move with the limo, and ducking out on the premiere, and downing enough shots at the afterparty that I don't know if anything else should make this list."

"No, that's… pretty much the highlight reel."

Eliot nods, hoping the dull shadows in his eyes are just a trick of the light.

"I'm sorry. I know you were only trying to do your job." Quentin visibly tenses for a second, with a wince so small Eliot might have imagined it. Hell, maybe he had, just to see something better than the utterly blank face that follows. "And I didn't mean to make that hard for you. I never want that."

Quentin flicks his eyes down to the floor, adjusting just enough to fold in on himself, and suddenly the arms crossed tight across his torso don't seem like a sign of barely-contained anger, so much as the only thing keeping him from flying apart.

"Q —"

"It's fine," he mutters, tucking his arms a little tighter and sounding anything but. "When are you leaving?"

Something stabs through Eliot's ribcage, razor sharp, and he swallows as the ache of it spreads everywhere. "Uh, yeah," he says, as even as his voice is going to get with the panic gripped tight around his throat. "I can go."

"No, El." Quentin looks exasperated and sounds exhausted, but Eliot can barely see through the relief at hearing both of those syllables separately. "Brakebills. When are you leaving for Brakebills?"

Eliot blinks, thrown wildly off the balance he'd just gotten back. "That's… actually what I wanted to talk about, earlier. How did you —"

His phone goes off again, and the third time must be the charm. Quentin smiles, small and thin, as though even the effort is painful. "You should probably check that," he says, too quiet. Eliot opens his mouth — of all the things he _should_ do in this moment, with the very air around them charged and confused, that is maybe the last — but Q cuts him off with the shrug of one shoulder. "What if it's Margo? Or Fogg? News from the studio, even?" He pauses, frowns. "But mostly Margo."

That postscript is the only thing that has Eliot reluctantly reaching for his pocket, his eyes trained on Quentin until the phone is fully free.

He has two new texts, from _Alice_ , of all people, and distractedly taps the first notification. It's nothing, really, or at least nothing he needs to worry about right now — a courtesy call, of sorts, letting him know that she's sent over a statement for him to review for release when news about the Texas trip breaks. Not if, when. But he can't focus on that right now, not with the message that immediately follows, the one that upends his equilibrium entirely.

 _Also,_ it reads, _Quentin came by. He had some questions that I couldn't answer. Safe travels._

Well, shit.

That's one mystery solved. It just doesn't make any goddamn _sense_.

If Quentin had found out about the sojourn to Brakebills on his own, maybe sometime last night, from Mike — because even hungover, Eliot would remember spilling those particular beans, and he knows that Bambi would _never_ — then Alice handing him this heads up is a kindness, however acerbic the wording. But if she'd taken telling him into her own hands, after spending _years_ with Quentin, knowing he would spin out in ever-shrinking circles of speculation and uncertainty until his brain simply started to eat itself… well, that's exactly the opposite.

Eliot knows which option he's hoping for. But he brings his eyes back to Quentin — still standing behind the sofa, stoic and stony but bleeding sadness from every pore, practically vibrating with the effort of holding himself together — and knows the odds are in favor of door number two.

Besides, Alice hasn't been kind to him in years. Not that he could really blame her.

Not until now.

He watches Q's brows drop down, defaulting to concern despite himself — god only knows what his face must look like.

"What is it?"

Eliot tucks his phone back into his pocket, pulls in a breath and schools his face into something neutral. "It's… not Margo," he sidesteps, because lying to Q, by anything other than the faintest of omissions, is not something that he does, and fuck if he doesn't need that lifeline right now, just to keep track of which way is up. "Listen, about Brakebills —"

Quentin's face shutters faster than he can speak. Seriously, _fuck Alice Quinn_.

"I wanted to tell you myself," Eliot says. "For you to hear it from me."

"So you're really going," Quentin replies.

Eliot nods. "Tomorrow."

There's a beat, and a breath, and then Quentin's features inch into something much more familiar. Something he _knows_. "Okay, but," he huffs out, " _why?_ "

"Because the opportunity presented itself," Eliot says, as if all his limbs aren't flooding from the broken dam of tension. "Because I'm going to drive myself nuts, sitting in an empty house holding my breath. So it was either hide out here, and drive you nuts right along with me, or answer the siren call of blatant escapism."

Quentin snorts. "I thought that's what Ibiza was for."

The echo of Margo, thrilling and aching all at once, nearly throws Eliot for a loop— what has he ever done to deserve either one of them? — but Q's scowling, stubborn face is like gravity, anchoring him in place.

"Not that kind of escape. More… journey of self-reflection. Spending some quality downtime elsewhere."

"Not just _anywhere_ , though," Quentin says, and it dawns on Eliot, then — he hadn't been asking _why_ in the general sense. He's wondering why _Brakebills_. "You want to spend that quality time in some tiny town in Texas with some random guy you more or less met online. Or are we spinning that some other way?"

His black coffee tone hangs heavy in the air, sharp and dark and slightly acidic. Eliot inhales, and for the space of a breath, lets himself believe Quentin might actually be _jealous_.

Which is, frankly, ridiculous. It's Quentin being Quentin, whose protective streak is a mile long and tends to manifest as an overdeveloped sense of justice — he's been wary of the men in Eliot's orbit since Sebastian, always on the lookout for the next way he could be wronged. Poppy had labeled him Eliot's lap dog, once, and hadn't bothered to notice that the puppy is a pit bull.

But jealousy is as impossible an idea as what Margo had posed this morning. And just as he had then, Eliot holds it warm and safe in his lungs for one brilliant, blinding moment, and then he lets it go.

"No spin," he says. "It is what it is." And an explanation is definitely in order, but as drained dry as he feels, he's not sure he can tap that vein again today. Not even with a little help from the wine.

Instead, he sinks to the flat, wide arm of Quentin's writing chair and silently waits to see if he will follow suit. No dice — Q holds position, half-hidden behind the sofa with his hands tucked across his torso, looking equals parts immovable and like a stiff breeze might blow him over.

Eliot looks down at his lap and takes the only avenue available.

"You asked, not too long ago, what Poppy Kline has against me." He glances up in time to catch Quentin's surprise — cautious in a way they never are with each other, but he'll take it, since it's brought a curious brightness back to Q's eyes. "That is a loaded and lengthy list at this point, but… it all started with Indiana."

He pulls in a deep breath. After what feels like forever, Quentin is finally looking squarely at him, instead of everywhere but.

"Not long after we got the official pickup, the network put out a press release and sent the pilot screener to critics, all in pretty rapid succession. We had barely begun production, officially, but on the back of _Thrones_ , they wanted to lock down the next big thing. Which actually worked — the show started getting an insane amount of buzz. Subsequently, so did I. And you know how busy a bee Poppy is." Quentin's arms have slowly dropped to his sides. Eliot licks his lower lip and keeps talking. "She went to Whiteland, did some digging. A lot of digging. Margo caught wind of it in time, and I ended up scrambling to detail my humble beginnings for an exclusive _GQ_ profile that beat Poppy to print."

Quentin's brows furrow further, one hand shoving roughly at his hair. "So, what," he says, "she's holding a lifelong grudge because you told the world you're from farm country before she could do it first?"

Fuck, it sounds so simple that way. And maybe it is, for Quentin, who can somehow hear _she did some digging_ come out of his mouth and not default to skeletons in the closet.

Or bodies in the ground.

"No, Q, the grudge is because… I didn't just scoop her on my country bumpkin backstory. I filed a cease-and-desist, and then a permanent injunction, before she could tell the whole world that I killed someone."

Quentin flinches, visibly deflating. "El, that was —"

"An accident?" Eliot scoffs. "An act of god? A cosmic attempt to smite bullies and baby gays in one fell swoop?"

"Self-defense," Quentin counters, the words catching in his throat.

Eliot hums. He's not the only one here who's haunted. "Sure, call me out on a technicality."

Granted, it's not _not_ true — he'd already been bleeding and bruised and in full retreat when Logan Kinnear had caught up with him by the creek, and he'd tried words of reason as he ran too close to the edge, and it's not as though he could even shove him all that hard, with one wrist broken the way it was.

The jut of jagged rock he'd hit on the way down, the one that had cracked his skull like an egg, had sort of done away with those finer details.

Eliot's still not sure anyone would have believed he hadn't lured Logan out there under false pretense, for some nefarious queer purpose, if Taylor hadn't followed the breadcrumbs of broken stalks and bloody soil and seen just enough of the encounter for himself.

Even so… he'd thought the thought. Pain and panic had made him desperate, but years of provocation had made him drained, and his brain had raged _I wish you'd just fucking die_ right before he'd reached out and pushed. Before he'd made that very thing happen, as if his mind had willed it. As motives go, self-defense has always been generous, when it still feels so much like self-preservation.

Taylor had called it karma.

"You were a minor," Quentin says, stepping over the arm of the sofa and pretzeling onto the seat. "I thought those records were supposed to be sealed."

Eliot spreads his hands — so were all the loose lips in town, courtesy of the equally persuasive powers of both money and Margo, but here they were. "Hence the injunction."

"So how did she even —"

"Beside the point," he cuts in, "which is, by the way, never Poppy. I only led with that because… look, to say that I have some unresolved Indiana-shaped issues would be an understatement of epic proportions. And given last night's limo tale of trauma, and likely just _me_ in general, I assume that's not entirely news to you."

Q presses his lips together — not quite a smile, but a baby step in the right direction.

"Not so much," he says, though agreement is a mere formality, "no."

"Then you also know that I don't exactly discuss it," Eliot says. "Interviews are one thing, that's… persona. Performance. It's easy to boil everything down to a single sentence soundbite about how growing up on a farm was great prep for those grueling fourteen-hour shoots, or how it taught me that I'm _really_ not a morning person. But off the record, I don't talk about it. I don't _think_ about it, not if I can help it."

"And then, last night," Quentin says, careful but curious, "you did."

Leaning forward to pluck a puzzle piece from the little pile left on the table, Eliot nods. "Not just surprise story time with you. At dinner, with Mike… Honestly, what surprises me most isn't that I talked about things I haven't even thought about in ages. It's that I did it without wanting to throw myself into traffic when I was done." The piece slots into place along the line between blue and indigo, fits so neatly he can barely see its edges. "I've spent a long time listing the pros and cons of my life in terms of then and now, with _before_ on one side and _after_ on the other and never the twain shall meet. But I'm not sure how accurate that actually is."

The last of the wariness leaves Q's eyes, wiped clear by the compassion that floods in like a wave, and suddenly Eliot has to look away. He's no stranger to sitting in this room and getting deep and dark and personal. But the sun's still up, and they're in the wrong seats. The fucking wine isn't even _open_.

He makes himself laugh, thick and wet, and it sounds as wrong as it feels.

"Don't get me wrong," he says, "I am never going back to Whiteland. I'm fairly sure whoever said 'you can't go home again' meant me, specifically. But I can't keep ignoring the fact that I was more emotionally attached to my trailer than anywhere I've actually _lived_ , or that I wake up most mornings in a house that I hate. The truth is, I ran away from home a long time ago, Q. And I knew that I'd never really found a new one, but… I didn't realize that I was still running."

He shrugs on the heels of it, feels the ricochet of it all rattle around his head. This way was supposed to be _easier_ , less all-consuming than the conversation turned full-on confessional he'd had with Margo. But he'd opened another vein entirely, full of fresh blood, and only left another wound to bandage.

He watches Quentin's mouth twitch, watches him wrap one arm around his calf and twist his thumb into the cuff of his hoodie. It's possible not even Q can find the words for all this.

"Um," Quentin says, making Eliot's eyes burn, "it was Thomas Wolfe. Just… for the record."

Eliot blinks, brain turning the words back and forth, and then snorts out a laugh that leaves the air in his lungs immeasurably lighter. Of course the Lit kid from Columbia would know the source of his throwaway quote.

Of _course_ Quentin Coldwater would know how to defuse a bomb in Eliot's shape — by doing nothing but being delightfully, deliberately disarming, by being a brat _on purpose_ , and turning his loaded laughter into something real.

By being brave enough not to let him off that easy.

"So whatever you've been… running toward," Q says quietly, "you think that you'll find it in Brakebills."

Eliot reaches for another puzzle piece, though what he really wants is a corkscrew and a glass the size of his head. "I don't know," he sighs. The way Mike had talked about Brakebills — a small community in a sprawl of open space, close-knit but open-minded, full of good people leading refreshingly simple lives… It all sounded very Whiteland by way of Pleasantville. Familiar enough ground to exorcise some ghosts, without fully dragging him back into hell. "I think it might be where I find the things I've been running _from_? Between the show ending, and my career being up in the air…"

"Everything's changing," Quentin offers, and it's not at all what he would have said, but it's the right thing, regardless.

"Pretty much. And not to go full Stevie here — though, really, that's kind of an all or nothing thing — but I've been a little afraid of changing. I mean, the last time I did, I ended up a different person." The tiny piece of cardboard in Eliot's hand is the world's smallest crutch — a solid wash of green that might have been hard to place even a month ago, but there are so few pieces left now, it's all too easy to see where they belong. "Which is probably the point. I need to figure out how who I was fits into who I am. So… change it is. Starting with a change of scenery."

Quentin blows out a breath, shaking his head a bit. "You actually _are_ taking a sabbatical in Texas."

His voice is a strange mix of realization and relief, and underneath, a roiling frustration. "Uh," Eliot says, cocking his head, "if that's the takeaway in a nutshell, then sure, let's go with that."

"No, it's just something… nevermind," Q mumbles, fidgeting where he sits. "How long are you staying?"

"Until I have some sort of epiphany or Margo murders me in my sleep, whichever comes first. The timeline is fairly unclear. But the reservation's for a week." He looks back to the puzzle, hearing the wrongness of _when are you leaving_ and _how long are you staying_ echo between his ears, and presses the little green piece into the empty space only it can fill. "It's not that I meant to leave you out of the loop, or spring this on you out of the blue. If you'd rather stay here and write and spend some time with Julia —"

"Wait, I thought… you want me there?"

He glances up to where Q's anxious fidgeting has frozen, wide-eyed and open-mouthed and utterly still, as if his body had pressed pause mid-breath.

"Unless you tell me otherwise," Eliot says, slowly, and pulls his brows together. "Why wouldn't I want you there, Q?"

In the time it takes to blink, Quentin's expression goes from frozen to pained to completely unreadable.

His mouth snaps shut and his eyes slide away, and next to Eliot, Q's phone starts to vibrate across the tabletop. He reaches down to grab it, the screen flashing with Zelda Schiff's cat-eyed lit-rep-straight-from-central-casting face.

"Your agent is calling," he murmurs, tossing the phone across the coffee table as cold crawls up his spine.

Q fumbles to catch it before it falls, then jerks his head up, and everything is clear now, compounded, emotions flooding his features in layers — cornered, then caught, then a confounding tinge of guilt. He scrambles up from the sofa, phone clenched in one fist.

"Sorry, it, um, I really need to take this." Eliot holds up his hands and eyebrows in unison, and Quentin's face cycles through something apologetic and impossibly complicated. "Will you text me the details for the trip?"

"I mean it, Q. You don't have to go."

" _No_ , I… Just send me the itinerary, okay?"

Pressing his lips together, Eliot swallows. "Sure."

Quentin's head bobs in a jerky nod, then tucks the phone to his ear and turns to duck into his nook of an office off the kitchen. _Hey_ , Eliot hears, muffled, before the door swings softly shut.

In his wake, Eliot blinks at the strange sight — he's never seen that door closed before, and the space inside seems so much smaller now. For all he'd talked to Q about change, this isn't at all what he meant, with walls and unspoken words between them. But maybe this is the kind of change that _Quentin_ wants. The boundaries they never got around to setting.

The sun is going down, there are six puzzle pieces left, and the Bordeaux is still corked on the table.

He gets to use his key after all, to lock up behind him when he leaves.

"Wow. It's a good thing we made reservations."

That's the best Quentin can muster after a five-hour flight into a tiny regional airport, then two more folded into the third row of an SUV next to most of Margo's luggage.

At least Mike had traveled the day before, on his original contest itinerary. It's bad enough that Fogg had insisted on sending Eliot with a security detail in exchange for the use of his private plane — they'd borrowed the usual suspects from Julia's A-list caliber lineup, leaving her back in LA with the B Team of Pete and Shoshana. And though Kady's fairly indifferent to Quentin in general, Penny always seems one wrong word away from punching him in the face, and Quentin's not sure he could've taken that on top of being trapped in a metal tube with Mike and Eliot together for twelve hundred miles at thirty thousand feet.

Now here they are, standing in the parking lot of the only hotel in town, and with the exception of their tinted window rental, it is… completely empty. They file into the lobby, Quentin and Penny wrestling with Margo's bags while Eliot whistles under his breath.

"Well," he says, " _this_ is a lot of look."

Quentin's sure he's heard bigger understatements before, he just can't come up with one right now.

The Brakebills Lodge is a log cabin on steroids, all tin stars and taxidermy tacked to every wall, with a stacked stone hearth and hide rugs under heavy furniture and a plank of wood the shape of Texas hung behind the front desk, a little heart cut out of its middle.

"Must be the 'you are here' map," Margo mutters, "in case you forget which level of hell you're on."

The man behind the desk greets them with an oil-slick smile, proud and wide and kind of creepily intense, and awkwardly bows a bit at the sheer sight of Eliot. "Welcome to The Lodge! Such a pleasure to have you. I will be your host, Tick Pickwick."

Penny chokes on his travel cup of chai, then pauses. "Oh, you're serious."

"Uh, hi," Quentin says, propping his arms on the counter. "Checking in. Should be four rooms, under Hanson?"

Behind him, Margo snorts. "Because they had so many other options on the books."

"Bambi," El chides, still adoring, eyes locked his phone, "be nice."

She comes up beside Quentin, bumping against his hip and leaning back to the desk on her elbows. "Oh, why not," she answers, shrugging. "There's a lot of firsts happening today."

Quentin digs out his license and his work expense card, and Tick starts to tell them all about eight generations worth of Pickwicks who have called Brakebills home while he checks them in as slow as humanly possible.

He's rambling about some B-movie that had once filmed in town when he sets four actual _keys_ on the counter — dull gold and vaguely antique, each in its own unique shape with a numbered tag hanging from its handle — followed by a clipboard of forms. "Now my father, _Bick_ Pickwick, was managing the general store at the time — sign here, please, to authorize the charges — and delightfully, he wound up being featured in _several_ frames of the final —"

" _Fuck_ ," Penny hisses, and steps forward to snatch the nearest key.

Quentin sighs, watching his retreat. "We still need a sweep."

"There's nobody fucking _here,_ Quentin." Penny throws up an arm, still backing away. "I think we're good. Unless this dude is gonna bore us to death."

He turns toward the hallway leading down to the rooms, trying to tug Kady with him, but she stops to put a hand on Eliot's arm. "Let me know when you're ready to leave," she says. "As in don't, unless it's with me."

Eliot salutes with two fingers without taking his eyes off his screen, even as she walks away. "You're the boss."

"Damn skippy," she calls back, then disappears down the hall with Penny on her heels. The two of them together are sort of terrifying, which is probably why they're in security in the first place, but also sort of magnetic, which is probably why Julia's forever mixed up in the middle. She always did like a little danger with her drama.

Turning back to the desk, Quentin tucks his hair behind his ear and tries not to cringe.

"Sorry. He's… from Florida."

Tick Pickwick leans forward, overshooting magnanimous to land somewhere around smarmy. "We get all kinds." He hands back both cards and takes a deep breath. "As I was saying…"

Quentin braces for the thrilling conclusion of An Oral History of Complete Strangers in Brakebills, but Margo spins, her face a mask of flawless patience that means the total opposite.

"Listen, Dick —"

"Tick."

"Not better." She smiles, sugar sweet and razor sharp all at once. "The thing is, we had an early flight —"

Eliot hums, almost an afterthought. "It wasn't _that_ early."

"— and a long drive —"

"Wasn't that long," El singsongs.

"— both of which ended _in Texas_. And while this is all just riveting, I have a hot date with any pill that ends in X and a nap long enough to bring that unholy trinity down to a single source of trauma. So if we're all done here, we'll just take our keys, go get settled, and hope like hell the pillows are hypoallergenic."

She picks up a key of her own, shrugging when Quentin turns to gape so he won't outright glare. "What?" she asks, wide-eyed and unbothered. "I said it nicely."

El finally tucks his phone away, giving Tick a grin so bright the man blinks.

"Thank you for the warm welcome." He palms both remaining keys, passing one to Quentin. "I'm afraid traveling makes some of us cranky, but please believe me when I say, we could not be more thrilled to be here. It's always lovely to meet people so _entrenched_ in the local community."

"Oh, I," Tick stammers, "well, of course."

He's dazed enough for them to make their escape, Margo's bags divided between Quentin and Eliot, though there is the hasty call of _If you need anything else_ as they round the corner toward their rooms.

They drop Margo at the first door in their row, Eliot brushing a kiss along her hairline before he breaks away. Quentin's is two doors down — Penny and Kady must have the room in between, which he's sure no one is exactly thrilled about — with Eliot last in line, dead-ending the hall.

El sighs as he rolls his bag by, trailing a hand across Quentin's back. "What are the odds that this is the presidential suite?"

He unlocks his room, hovering in the doorway.

"If I didn't mention it before, Q," he says, soft, "I'm glad that you came."

Then he ducks inside, leaving Quentin to stand alone in the hallway and try not to stare at the place where Eliot had been.

The door is quarter-sawn oak, solid and old, but its hardware is even older, the same worn brass as the impractical, inexplicable key. It takes a second to catch in the lock, even sticks a bit when he turns it. Then the door swings open to reveal the room behind — raw shiplap walls, another hide on the floor, a horse blanket hung over a log spindle footboard. It's larger than he would've thought, with space for a small sofa along one wall and a wide chest of drawers and a round table with two chairs by the window.

He cringes at the massive longhorn skull mounted above the TV, then leaves his bags by the door and flops back on the bed, trying to blot out the phantom feel of El's fingers.

Eliot is glad that he came.

Eliot is happy he's here.

But Eliot had been _gone_ last night, when Quentin had wrapped up his call with Zelda — he'd come out of the office, finally ready to have the conversation they desperately needed to have, only to be greeted by an empty room and a full bottle of wine and a nearly finished puzzle on his coffee table.

El had sent the info on the trip about an hour later, and Quentin had waited for the string of texts that would invariably follow — things like _I think Todd has been trying on my vests_ and _on a scale of one to ten, how likely am I to need an ascot?_ and _Q, this is crucial — which wash better says 'sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come'_ , immediately followed by a picture of two identical pairs of khakis. The kinds of things Eliot always sends when he has to pack alone.

But all Quentin had gotten was a _see you in the morning_ , then radio silence for the rest of the night.

He turns his head and meets the longhorn's empty eye sockets. After floating through the day before in a fog, thick with the fear of being forgotten, he'd been _so close_ to taking this weight off his chest. To telling Eliot everything, even if he'd only gotten there by being backed into a corner.

But El is right next door. There's a tiny window of time between getting out of his travel ensemble and getting into the shower — he only breaks routine when there's a house robe worth lounging in, and that doesn't very seem likely here — but if Quentin can catch him while he's still hanging his clothes, maybe he can finally say the things that need to be said.

"Fuck it," he tells the skull, getting up with a groan. Timing is everything.

He stops next to the closet and looks down at his messenger bag, trying to picture the envelope tucked behind his laptop, the one with a brad-bound script sealed inside.

Then he takes a deep breath, reaches into the closet for a less loaded offering, and steps out into the hall.

When Eliot opens his own door, the travel clothes he's still wearing are accompanied by an expression of not unpleasant surprise.

"Hey," he says, then glances down, registers what Quentin is holding, and tugs him into the room by the wrist, the surprise smothered by blinding relief. " _Oh thank god_. There are eight hangers in this entire room, Q. Eight. I counted more dead animals than that between here and the lobby. Maybe eight hangers is the baseline for Brakebills, but where I come from, it's a hate crime."

Then he blows out a puff of air and goes almost comically still, one hand wrapped around all eight hangers from Quentin's closet.

"Fuck," he mutters, "that's… not true at all, actually. Kind of on multiple levels."

Quentin twitches into a tight smile he's not sure El even sees. Guess the road to epiphany starts here.

He shifts the hangers in his hands, telegraphing the fact that he's going to let go so Eliot can get a grip, then crosses to one of the turned-leg chairs and tucks one foot under him as he sits.

"Is this normal?" he asks. "The whole… one hotel, all vacancy thing?"

The inquiry snaps Eliot out of it, at least — he drops all but one hanger onto his open suitcase and picks up a pair of dark jeans that can only be new. "Towns like this? Pretty much. A handful of dubiously decorated B&Bs, maybe a campground or two, and a place like this. We had the esteemed Whiteland Motor Inn, which also doubled as a diner, a laundromat, and a twice-weekly venue for the local chapter of AA."

The chambray shirt that comes next is an old staple, from the _resort casual_ section of Eliot's closet. Thanks to a very unfortunate incident with a very hot cup of coffee, Quentin knows firsthand just how soft it is.

"I haven't seen that one in a while. But it probably makes sense for this."

Eliot snorts. "Sadly, the farm fashion aesthetic is not something I've successfully managed to forget. There's a whole section of this suitcase that's nothing but unironic flannel."

"Can't wait," Quentin says, the words desert dry on his tongue. "And you couldn't either, I guess?"

He watches El's movement hitch for half a heartbeat, a too-wide smile on its heels. "Sorry about that," he says, so evenly it would be maddening if Quentin weren't so glad he hasn't chosen to play dumb. "I wasn't sure how long you'd be. And with traffic, and packing, I figured…"

Quentin nods, because prompting is pointless — trailing off is what Eliot does when he can't settle on something to say that isn't a lie.

"I just, I wanted to talk to you about something. I've _been_ … wanting. To talk to you."

Eliot bends, sort of stiffly, and pulls a loosely rolled polo from the bag. "Oh?"

Nodding, Quentin sucks in a breath. Here goes everything.

"I've been thinking about my whole, like, position. My _place_. I mean, on paper, I'm your personal assistant. But I can't remember the last time I did most of the things in my job description. Yeah, I handle your schedule and juggle your calls and do whatever random thing you may need at the moment, but. El, the person who does most of the things that a PA _should be_ doing, the, the errands and the food runs and the grunt work… that's _Todd_."

El holds up a finger, hanger half-in the collar of the next shirt in line.

"First of all," he says, "Margo made up that job description. I'm almost positive half of it was just thrown in there for her personal amusement. And second, I'll have you know, _Todd_ is _extremely_ well compensated. With the added bonus of being able to bask in my presence."

"That's, I'm not saying he isn't —"

"Then what are you saying, Q? That I don't make you do enough menial bullshit on a day-to-day basis? Because if that's the case, feel free to pick up my dry cleaning whenever."

"I'm saying screening your inbox isn't exactly rocket science, okay, there are literal _programs_ that could do like half my job." Quentin shoves his hair out of his face. This isn't coming out right. But any approach like this was bound to go wrong, in a way — it's impossible to be just an employee when Eliot treats him as an equal. "I'm saying, sometimes… I don't know why I'm here, El."

Eliot goes very still, eyes fixed on the floor, shirt and hanger dangling from the hand dropped to his side.

"Not _here_ here, as in Brakebills, but —"

"Yeah," Eliot cuts in. "I got it."

Quentin has been dreading this for months, run through every awful outcome he could think of, and somehow, it's still harder than he'd thought it would be. But Eliot had done exactly this, not even a full day ago — cracked his head open and laid out its insides, all for Quentin to see, with the blow that started it all his deepest insecurity. And now here he is, in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere, with a pair of antlers on the wall and a lack of adequate hangers, trying to put it all back together again.

Even that is a false equivalence, though, when the thing Quentin needs to crack open is his _heart_ , with nothing but the blunt force of brutal honesty. And it feels so fragile as it is, trapped in a vice, the smallest turn all it needs to shatter completely.

But the wheels of this are already in motion. All he can do is try to catch up, and get on board, or let it run him over.

"It's just… what do I actually _do_ , Eliot? Besides follow you around with a phone in my hand and get wine drunk with you a few nights a week? " His brain kicks into author mode, trying to find the right way to say this without freaking out or falling apart. "I know it's been, like. A while. And I've been working on the same script for most of it. But if the only reason I even have this job is that you, you feel _bad for me_ , or something…"

El's head comes up sharply. The look in his eyes is unreadable. "You really think that's what this is?"

"I don't know what this is, El. That's kind of the whole point." Quentin takes a deep breath, hoping it'll calm the chaos swirling around his head. But it's buried beneath the beat of his pulse and the echo of another Eliot — words from a weeklong run in a _Closer_ revival on the West End late last year. _Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist, wrapped in blood._ "Last night, when you talked about how things were changing… I mean, historically, I don't handle change all that well. But it made me think that, maybe… maybe the way we exist needs to change, too."

It had seemed like the perfect setup, but suddenly it's the worst thing he could have said — Eliot bristles, then goes blank.

Quentin stumbles to his feet, scrambling for better words when all he's wondering is whether Eliot is still glad that he came.

"Look, let's just, can we find someplace to go, maybe grab some food? Somewhere we can sit down and talk this out, you know. The way we probably should have before we fled the state."

As last-ditch efforts go, it's a better than decent attempt. El hadn't bothered with the sad chicken and wilted salad on the plane, and considering the state of their accommodations, he seriously doubts that room service is an option. But he shakes his head, slow and stiff, staring at nothing.

"Actually," he says, his voice flat and far away, "I already arranged to meet up with Mike for a late lunch."

Something seizes in Quentin's lungs. "Oh," he says. "Um… yeah, okay."

El's polite public smile makes a rare private appearance. "As a matter of fact, barring the absence of indoor plumbing, I should probably go get ready for that. In the meantime, if you wouldn't mind, can you let Kady know I'll be ready to head out in about an hour?" He shoves the shirt into the closet and abandons his suitcase entirely, breezing past Quentin and toward the bathroom without waiting for an answer. "You know, as long as you're looking for appropriately PA things to do."

Quentin closes his eyes, that weight on his chest so heavy he can't breathe. This has gone so very, very wrong. " _Eliot_."

And El stops at the threshold, hands wrapped around the door jamb. Glances quickly over his shoulder, and then nods, almost to himself.

"Thanks for the hangers."

Quentin stays long enough to hear the shower turn on, blindly bumping El's bag on his way out the door.

They hadn't even made it to the flannel.

The fact that Eliot is flanked front and back to do something as simple as walk into a restaurant is a pointed reminder of the reason why he doesn't do security details.

The local diner has been christened The Hoof and Horn — because what else would it _possibly_ be, here in small town Texas — and looks like every mom and pop greasy spoon ever committed to celluloid, all faded vinyl booths and chrome-trimmed Formica and speckled linoleum floor. Mike waves from a seat by the window with a slow and easy grin, and Eliot freezes just inside the door, realizing all at once that he's here on a hypothetical posed by a guy he's never even seen in broad daylight.

 _The way you probably should have before you fled the state_ , Quentin taunts in his head.

He isn't going to think about Quentin.

Penny has stopped short behind him, colliding softly with his back, but his snort isn't in response to the contact.

"That's the guy you got on a plane for?" he asks, still so close Eliot can feel him shrug. "Looks more like a road trip. San Diego. Maybe Vegas, if you had to cross a border."

"Pen," Kady warns.

"I'm just saying. This seems excessive." Penny steps around him, brows scrunched in confusion. "Besides, I thought you were —"

" _Penny._ " His hands go up and his mouth snaps shut, and Kady looks up at Eliot before he can really ponder how that sentence could possibly end. "I'm assuming you remember the drill."

"I do indeed," he says. "For the record, my safeword is cummerbund."

Penny's face folds into exasperation. "It's a _signal_ , man."

"Oh, I know. I just felt like sharing."

He shakes his head, mumbling as Kady nudges him away. "You had to make it weird."

They settle in on the same side of a booth two tables behind Mike's blond head, and Eliot takes a deep breath and a few steps forward, sliding into the seat across from him.

"Why yes," he says, "this time I _did_ travel with an entourage."

It makes Mike's smile widen, a chuckle rumbling in his chest. "I guess I don't merit an introduction this go round."

"They're not all that big on the pleasantries. My running theory is that they'd prefer to remain anonymous, but since they're too hot to be invisible, they settle for silent and aloof.” Eliot nods to the space over his shoulder. "That's Kady, my borrowed bodyguard, and Penny, her henchman."

Mike raises an eyebrow. "Someone else to make sure you behave?"

Eliot glances around the restaurant, feeling like every fish-out-of-water film cliché. The locals scattered in seats inside are pointedly trying not to stare, but a handful of people on the other side of the glass are openly gaping as they go by.

"No," he answers, "it's to make sure that everyone else does. I don't usually bother with security, but unfortunately, my agent insisted. And those two tend to be slightly more effective than walking around with Quentin scowling at everyone who comes too close."

Tilting his head, Mike makes a little noise of dissent in the back of his throat. "I think you're underestimating the power of Quentin's scowl."

Their waitress is a bombshell with a baby face and a wash of bright coral lipstick, who sets two glasses of water on the table. Eliot's been in LA too long, is used to slick servers in crisp white shirts who introduce themselves and explain the _dining experience_ and memorize every order down to the tiniest, most high-maintenance detail. But this woman has a worn uniform and an actual order pad and a name tag pinned to her collar that reads _Robin_ , a word she never gets around to saying around her gum.

She pulls two straws from her apron and tosses them to the tabletop, paper-wrapped and made of plastic, then plucks a pen from behind her ear.

"What can I get for you boys?"

Eliot tries to laugh, truly he does — because it sounds like a line and this feels like a scene and she looks like she's got half a dozen years on him, at most — but his vocal cords feel frozen solid, and all that comes out is air. He's never set foot in here before, in this diner, in this town, but he _knows_ this place, knows the sight and the sound and the bacon and burnt coffee smell of it, and it's somewhere he hasn't been for half a lifetime.

For a second, all he can see is the late afternoon light of every other Sunday after church, squeezed into a booth between his middle two brothers and squirming in his too-short slacks.

Mike looks puzzled but takes pity on him anyway. "We'll take a couple sweet teas," he says, "and another minute, thanks."

Eliot shakes his head as she walks away, trying to clear away the cobwebs that have him snared. "Sorry. Déjà vu."

"In a bad way?"

He contemplates smiling and swallows instead, dragging his nails down the pebbled plastic of his cup just to hear the fuzzy familiar sound, feel it skip under his fingertips like Braille. "Remains to be seen."

A bit flip, perhaps, but at least it's honest. As much to himself as to Mike. And that's what he's here for, right? To find the parts of himself he left behind when he left Whiteland, the parts worth saving, and fill in their empty spaces so he's closer to whole.

Christ, the placemats are also their menus.

"Well," Mike says, probably more patient than this whole debacle deserves, "the meal is on me this time. So while you're working out whatever old memory's got you spooked, how 'bout I help you try a little something new?"

Robin comes back with their drinks, and Eliot sucks down the sugar rush in gulps while Mike orders about half the menu — chicken fried steak and a big bowl of chili and the brisket platter, no sauce, plus something called a kolache.

"Sausage, I think. And a slice of pecan pie."

She scribbles across her order pad without looking up, but her mouth curls up at the corners. "You need two plates, hon?"

Eliot tenses involuntarily, in a way he hasn't had to since he left Indiana, but Mike just waves a hand. "That's okay. I think we're good with sharing."

"Alrighty," she says, tucking her pen back behind her ear. "Then I'll get that right in for you."

"That is a lot of meat," Eliot says when she's gone. Mike grins at the callback, and Eliot props his elbows on the edge of the table in the hopes of looking steadier than he feels. "Is this massive pile of protein revenge for making you eat your vegetables?"

"Hey now, that steak comes with a side of fried okra." Mike rubs at the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish, then raps his knuckles on the table. "I just wanted you to have a little taste of Texas. You don't have to eat it all."

Eliot holds up a finger. "Then the joke's on you. I've been eating my feelings at a professional level for _years_."

Mike's laughter is an altogether lovely thing, warm and round and rolling. He leans forward, shaking his head. "I still can't believe you're here."

Well, he's not alone there. But they've already had one emotionally exhausting meal this week, and that feels like a heavy conversation to have over brisket.

He sips his sweet tea and takes a mental step back. Good lord, this stuff is dangerous. "Margo said the same thing when we got in."

What she'd actually said was _I can't believe people live here on purpose_ , but he's paraphrasing.

"I'm excited to finally meet her."

 _Finally_ feels like a stretch, considering it's been all of forty-eight hours since they'd met, themselves, but Eliot supposes it's the sentiment that counts.

"She'll get a kick out of that," he says. Someone knocks on the window at his right, and he smiles and waves as a squealing blonde snaps a picture. "It's been a while since anyone looked forward to their very first meeting with Margo."

"Should I be worried?" Mike asks, halting and at least half serious. "You seem pretty fond of her."

Eliot hums. "I adore her with every fiber of my being. I'd just hate to lull you into a false sense of security. Bambi's more the 'all shall love me and despair' type. It's fantastic."

"Bambi?"

He twists his ring with the pad of his thumb, unsure how to explain — it's not an inside joke, per se, and it's less a nickname than a term of endearment. It also isn't his story to tell. The only other person who actually knows its origin is Quentin, and that's only because Margo herself had been in a sharing mood. Or maybe just because it was Quentin.

He isn't supposed to be thinking about Quentin.

"Long story."

Ducking his head, Mike holds his hands up, as though he sees the dismissal for what it is. But Eliot must've looked a little too off for a little too long — Kady catches his eye, hackles half up and one brow arched high, and he has to wave her off in a way that doesn't look like the signal for help.

Mike glances over his shoulder and back, then blows out a baffled little laugh. "So you've got a male secretary and a female head of security. Seems like Los Angeles in a nutshell."

Everything in Eliot bristles, this time on behalf of everyone but the little boy he'd been. "Q's not my secretary," he says flatly, trying not to get stuck on the fact that Quentin apparently hadn't gotten that memo, either. "And frankly, I'm in better hands with Kady than I would be with a detail full of dicks."

It's the sort of role reversal Eliot's always appreciated — Penny is backup at best, most often there to be the decoy, the tits out tough guy distraction. People never quite see Kady coming.

But it's more than just her fists. It's her _focus_ , the impeccable instincts she brings to the table. Even now, she's still watching him, sights set like a sniper.

She tips her chin down almost imperceptibly, asking _you good?_ across the very air.

But Mike's face has melted into something mortified and bemused. "Bad joke, I'm sorry."

Eliot nods, more to Kady than the man across from him. He's usually the first to recognize a tongue planted firmly in cheek, and quick to respond in kind. Under any other circumstance, he would have lobbed that ball back without batting an eye.

The problem is, he's been blindsided too recently to see clearly where Q is concerned.

He startles at the feel of fingers brushing the back of his right hand and falling away again, looks up to blue eyes full of contrition.

"My mouth got away from me," Mike says. "I didn't mean anything by it, I swear."

"Well, mouths sometimes have minds of their own," Eliot answers, letting the held breath out of his lungs. "Judging from my response, for instance, one might think that I object to the very presence of dicks, which could not be further from the truth." He shakes his head, makes his mouth curve into something close to a smile. "Honestly, it's fine."

The tension melts out of Mike's face, making way for that slow, easy grin to return. He brings his hand back with it, thumb dragging across the line of Eliot's knuckles, making him shiver at more than the contact — this seems like something that should be shared between two people like a whisper, small and sweet and barely there, gone before it really begins. But they're surrounded by people turning to look from other tables and taking pictures from the other side of the window, and suddenly he's trapped in a fishbowl and trying not to drown, with the whole world around him tapping at the glass.

Fame drew focus like a spotlight, but this was something else. He'd almost forgotten this feeling — caught in a cage made of whispers and too-watchful eyes, weighing and measuring every move he made.

"Speaking of 'too hot to be invisible', you seem to be drawing a crowd." Mike's voice is low and kind and softly knowing, his fingertips tracing circles over Eliot's skin. "I think the novelty'll wear off in a few days, but right now, you're just about the biggest thing to ever hit Brakebills."

Eliot blinks, and for a moment, he's back in the blurry mess of his memory. In a bathroom in a big farmhouse in Whiteland, washing up for dinner, hearing the muffled hiss of a woman who'd always been so nice to him.

_I mean it, Taylor, you keep spending so much time with that boy and people are bound to start talking. You want them saying the same things about you?_

"You're very pretty," Mike says, "and very famous. Trust me, that's all it is."

Of all the ridiculous things that have been said since he sat down in this booth —the implication that Kady isn't totally, terrifyingly capable, the idea that meeting Margo shouldn't come with a healthy helping of fear, the sheer insanity of ordering chili that contains zero beans but comes with a side of _Fritos_ — that's the one that throws him most. Even on his best day, show folks notwithstanding, Eliot can count the people he truly trusts on one hand and still have fingers left when he's done.

But between the two of them, only one is still healthy and happy in his hometown, unbroken and unafraid and unapologetically himself. And Eliot's not sure whether that's down to Brakebills itself or the boy sitting on the other side of the table, but something about Mike's blue-sky eyes, clear and bright, makes him wonder whether it even matters at all.

He sniffs, feeling the safety of sarcasm settle over him like a warm blanket. "In that order?"

Those eyes are warmer, bolstered by the heat in the sly smile just beneath.

"Long as it's up to me," Mike says. "There's a whole mess of things before and in between, but since I'm still learning, that's as good a place as any to start."

Eliot swallows, thick, but the knot in his throat doesn't budge. _A whole mess_. Fuck if that isn't an apt description. It's the whole reason why he's here in the first place — to clean up the hot mess that is life outside of his career. To face the before and figure out the in between, in hopes of unfucking the after.

"Then I guess I'll have to take your word for it."

Robin comes back then, with two arms full of food and a flushed busboy carrying the overflow. Mike raises an eyebrow. "Well, why just mine?" he asks, and slides his smile their waitress' way. "Hey Rob, you take any issue with a little hand holding over lunch?"

"In the sense that you're in my way," she says, harried, hefting plate after plate to the table. She sets the bowl of chili down and sighs, one hand rubbing at the small of her back while the other waves the busboy away. "If I had any issue beyond that, I think Kellie might have something to say about it. You boys need anything else?"

Mike shakes his head. "I think we're good."

Eliot watches her go, if only to avoid Mike's blatant amusement. He clears his throat, pulls his brows together. "So, just to clarify, Kellie would be…"

"Her wife."

"Thought so." He flips his fork over with his free hand, pressing its tines into the paper napkin. "You'd tell me if I'd stumbled into the small-town Twilight Zone, right?"

Tipping his head back, Mike laughs and groans all at once. "Honestly, Eliot, if I didn't know you could be _you_ here, I would never've asked you to come."

For a split second, Eliot's breath catches in his chest. Then he exhales, shaky and slow, and shrugs out the uncertainty left behind.

"Well… here I am."

"Yeah," Mike says, squeezing the hand he's still holding. "Here you are."

There's a burn behind Eliot's eyes, but he takes a deep breath and turns his hand over, until Mike's fingers fall around his and their palms are pressed together. And even though he's done worse in public and far worse with an audience, it sends a little shiver up his spine — he's never done _this,_ not with anyone, and the realization that part of him has always _wanted to_ feels like some sort of gift.

Maybe it's not one or other, just a slightly different time and a wildly different place, with a boy who's a little bit older and seems a little bit wiser. Maybe, just maybe, it's both.

The chili isn't half bad. He does miss the beans, but doesn't entirely mind the Fritos.

It's as good a place as any to start.

Quentin Coldwater is a New Yorker.

Sure, he's _technically_ from Jersey. But between spending summers with Jane and six years at Columbia, the city had felt like home for a long time. And in the five years and change since he's been on the west coast, his answer to the oft-asked _where are you from_ — because virtually no one in LA is _from_ LA — has always been _New York_.

As a New Yorker, Quentin has a vague idea of what a farm objectively looks like — big red barn, weathered house with a wraparound porch, maybe a silo somewhere. Fields full of crops and a few fenced-in farm animals and the top of a tractor peeking over stalks of something green.

That's pretty much what he'd pictured, when he'd gotten Eliot's text last night. It had come on the heels of a couple others — _Just letting you know I'm back_ , which was immediately followed by _Not sure if it was the flight or the food coma, but I think I'm gonna call it a night_ , and then, a few long minutes later, _Wishing you words, if you're writing right now._

He'd still been trying to figure out how to answer when the last one had come in. _BTW, Mike invited us out to the farm tomorrow_ , it read. _Strictly voluntary. But if that's something you're at all interested in, Bambi and I are headed out at 8._

Quentin had sat there, cross-legged on the bed with his computer in his lap, reading into every word until the letters blurred together, and finally sent back the only thing that didn't make him nauseous.

_Like I'd ever miss Margo on a farm._

Now here they are, driving down a well-packed dirt road with Eliot behind the wheel, and only one thing has gotten any clearer.

Whatever this is, it is not a fucking _farm_.

They'd turned off the road where the directions indicated, but it would've been clear without the GPS, marked by a gated entrance and a grand metal archway that read _McCormick Ranch_ , arced over the silhouette of a bucking bull.

That had been about two miles back. And they still have about half a mile to go, according to the full-on professional signage posted along the roadside, directing them to the goddamn _Welcome Center_.

It turns out to be a small gatehouse in the center of a roundabout. Quentin's not sure if the man stationed inside is a guide or a _guard_ , but he looks friendly enough when Eliot rolls the window down.

"Morning," El says, "we're — "

"Oh, I know who you are," the guy says. "They're expecting you up at the main house." He leans out to hand Eliot a small stack of papers, then points in the direction they're headed. "Just follow this same road another mile or so, it'll come up on your left. Can't miss it."

Eliot nods, passing the papers off to Margo. "Thanks."

She snorts, shuffling as they get moving again. "Your boy's little farm has a brochure. A _brochure_ , El."

He stays curiously silent. Quentin's pretty sure _little_ is a misnomer.

After a few more minutes, Margo ducks forward to gape through the front windshield. "Holy shit," she says, so at least he's not alone there. "This isn't a farm, it's fucking Camp David."

The main house is a massive building that's everything the Brakebills Lodge wishes it was, all wood and glass and striking stacked limestone, topped with a slat metal roof and bookended between two towering chimneys.

But hey, he'd gotten the porch part right.

They pull into a circular turnoff on the other side of the road and climb out of the car collectively gaping. There's a cluster of buildings off to the right of the house, and a clearing just beyond that houses a row of parked pickups. But mostly it's just _land_ , both wooded and wide open, an overwhelming vastness of space as far as the eye can see.

Quentin has felt this once before, this sense of being somewhere outside the world — with his dad, at six years old, standing in the center of Central Park for the first time he can remember. It had been awe-inspiring then, like he'd discovered a new dimension; now, it's just disconcerting.

They've just crossed over toward the house, Margo's hand in Eliot's and Quentin trailing behind, when Mike emerges from the front entrance, face split into a smile. He's dressed in full dude ranch regalia, worn jeans and scuffed boots and flannel in faded buffalo check. It should be ridiculous, like a cowboy in costume, but Quentin looks at Eliot — elegantly casual in his distressed denim and soft white Henley, a blanket stripe button down tied around his waist —and feels a tug in his gut. They complement each other, in their respective black and white, and Quentin suddenly feels distinctly grey.

"Hey," Mike calls, trotting toward them, "you found it okay."

"Is _not_ finding it a common problem?" Eliot answers. "Because you can see this place from space."

Mike laughs and ducks his head. He might actually be blushing. "Well, everything's bigger in Texas." He steps forward, face hopeful and hand extended. "You must be Margo."

She smiles, the syrupy-sweet one that sets off alarm bells for anyone with half a brain.

"We're on a _farm_ ," she says, "There's no telling where that hand has been."

He puts both palms and both eyebrows up at that, so at least he has a healthy sense of self-preservation. "Fair enough. It's nice to meet you all the same."

Margo hums, agreement and dismissal all at once. "This is quite the place you've got here, Mike. Why don't you walk me through the big bullet points? I haven't had a chance to fully peruse the welcome packet."

Eliot nudges her with his hip. "We're _guests_ , Bambi, not negotiating a hostile takeover."

She shrugs. "Well, the day's still young."

"Not for a farm."

The response comes from El and Mike, in chorus, in fucking _unison_ — they're grinning at each other before they're even done speaking, and Quentin groans out an _oh my god_ under his breath before he can stop himself.

Eliot looks vaguely annoyed, Margo looks wildly amused, but Mike just nods his way, clearly having heard him but too polite to mention it.

"Good to see you again, Quentin," he says. "Glad you could come out."

At a loss for further words, Quentin waves, just once, like an asshole.

Mike clears his throat and jams his hands into his pockets. "As for the highlights, we're sittin' on just shy of eighteen hundred acres. The bulk of our business is beef, and we run about six hundred head of stock cattle, plus another ninety or so cow-calf pairs. But about a third of the land is reserved for commercial hunting — whitetail, wild turkeys, some hogs and javelinas. If it's in season in Texas, it's probably on this property."

A woman comes up behind him, holding a tray of drinks — iced tea, it looks like, and a round of bottled water with the ranch's logo on the label. Quentin scowls into his tea — super sweet, but undeniably delicious — and wonders if cold towels are coming next.

"Thanks, Jess," Mike says with a wink, then hooks his thumb over his shoulder as she heads to the door. "The main house is for family, but there's a lodge for hunting parties on the other side of the property, and a couple guest houses in between. We're booked, or I would've hosted y'all here. There's a skeet range down by the lodge, and some decent hiking and off-roading trails, if that's something that you're into."

"What?" Margo asks, arch. "No pool?"

Mike's smirk seems to throw even Margo off balance. "We're actually a live water ranch. There's three ponds on property, though they mostly belong to the cattle." Backing toward the house, he motions for them to follow, and they step into the shade of the wide wraparound porch as a group. "Beyond that, there's a mile and a half of Long Hollow Creek. And then there's, well."

They round the corner behind the house, where there's a firepit and a row of rocking chairs and a massive outdoor kitchen with a table that must be ten feet long. Which is all moot, since beyond a stretch of grass and lush green trees, the back of the house sits on a bluff that drops to a wide stretch of water below.

It's a ridiculously beautiful view, but Quentin doesn't take it in long — he's too busy watching Eliot, who's frozen stiff. Whose eyes, fixed but unfocused, haven't left the edge.

"We've got two miles of private frontage on the Frio River," Mike says. _Oblivious_ feels harsh, since he barely knows El at all, but hey, if the shoe fits. "You can swim, fish, kayak, there's even a paddle boat or two around here somewhere." He turns to Margo, mouth twisting like he's trying not to smile. "But no, there is no pool."

"Easy, cowboy," Margo says, "don't get cheeky."

"Actually…" He snaps his fingers, which snaps El out of it. "That reminds me, I've got something for you."

He jogs down the deck and ducks behind the stacked stone bar, and Margo tugs hard on Eliot's hand until he blinks down into her eyes.

"You good?"

El gives her a tight smile that doesn't reach his eyes, then pulls her in close enough to press his lips to the side of her head. "But of course, Bambi."

Mike comes back in a _cowboy hat_ , pale nubuck with a leather band, and carrying a cardboard box that he drops at Eliot's feet. "I promised you a second date Stetson," he says, reaching inside, "but since I didn't deliver, I figured the third time was the charm. I had to make amends somehow."

He pulls another hat out of the box, this one a deep, rich olive suede with an intricate gold buckle on the side, as dark as his is light.

Eliot blinks, both charmed and perplexed. "You don't know my size."

Flicking his eyes down and back up again, Mike gives him a slow grin. "I know enough," he says. "To make an educated guess, that is."

"Nope," Margo mutters, stepping away from Eliot to sit heavily on a nearby swing. "Farm or no farm, it's too early for this shit."

Quentin doesn't disagree, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Not when El is about to paste on a smile and pull out his standard _the thing is, hair like this doesn't just happen_ and politely but firmly decline.

Except Eliot does exactly none of those things.

"Well, I'm here," he says, taking the hat and tossing his head back, "might as well go full native," and actually puts the damn thing on. The shape sets off the planes of his face, makes him all sharp cheekbones and stubbled jawline, and the color picks up the warmth in his hair, brings out the green in his eyes.

Plus, it fits fucking perfectly.

Which doesn't go unnoticed. Mike reaches up with one hand, tilts the brim back a fraction of an inch. "Like cowboy Cinderella," he says, and Eliot's laughter echoes into the river.

Margo rocks to her feet with a groan. "Okay, as fascinating as this little fairy tale is, can we get the grand tour on the road? The outdoor portion of my day is rapidly approaching overtime."

They end up piling into Mike's big black pickup. Quentin settles in behind the driver's seat, then looks over in shock when Eliot folds himself into the space beside him, holding his new hat in his hands.

"Oh," Quentin says, "you didn't want to, um…"

He gestures toward the front until understanding floods El's features. "Bambi hasn't taken a backseat to me in all the years I've known her, Q, I'm hardly going to make her start now."

Quentin nods, then has to look away. For every time that Eliot's claimed to be a vain, selfish product of Hollywood — loudly, and often — there are a dozen moments like this one, when he's humble and thoughtful and selfless to a fault, and utterly silent about it until someone asks.

If Mike is bothered by the seating arrangements, he hides it well. He takes a winding road through the property, pointing out random things along the way — one of the ranch's three wells, the turnoff to a tannery where they process hides for wholesale, an industrial barn the size of an airplane hangar that houses the heavy machinery. Quentin watches a tractor trailer go by, towing what looks like a section of moveable fencing, and risks another glance at Eliot.

"Is this what it was like?" he asks. Holy shit, they've got their own _gas station_. "Back in Whiteland?"

Eliot doesn't look away from the window, but Quentin can see the small shake of his head, the way his throat moves as he swallows. "Not even a little."

From his tone, Quentin can't tell if that's a good thing or not.

They pull into a wide clearing with a cluster of structures, and park next to an ambling building with pens along the back.

"There's a vet in town," Mike says when they're all out of the truck, El back in his hat, "but she's too far to come out in an emergency, so we have our own facility and a team on staff."

He holds the door open for them to walk through, and Quentin steps through last, breathing in air that's a mixture of animal and antiseptic. It's quiet, and they walk past open doors to empty rooms with packed earth floors until they reach the last one in line. His confusion must show on his face, since Mike's next statement is directed at him.

"I know it looks damn near abandoned in here, but believe me, that is the best thing for business." He knocks on the only closed door, looking back to Eliot. "We've only got one patient right now, but I thought you might like to meet her."

The door opens to reveal a short man in a long apron, smeared in places with something white and wet that's scattered with little bits of straw.

"Hey, doc," Mike says. "Are we too late for breakfast?"

"Not at all." The vet shuffles back from the door to let them inside. "We had our morning weigh-in, so mealtime's just getting started."

The room itself is empty, but the wooden doors to the outside are wide open, and inside the pen, there's a flannel-clad man with the biggest bottle and the smallest cow that Quentin's ever seen.

The calf is curled up in a pile of straw, a fawn-colored bundle of fuzz, and Mike crosses over to crouch down next to it and scratch below one red-tagged ear. "This little lady was born last night, a bit early. She'd usually feed from her mother 'til she's weaned, but it was a rough delivery, and her dam didn't make it. Now she's a bottle calf."

He reaches up to take the bottle from the man next to him. "Thanks, Renny," he says, then tilts the tip of it towards Eliot as the man moves away. "What d'ya say, wanna feed her?"

Before the trip, and this place, and that hat, Quentin would've put money on El's answer being some diplomatic but disgusted variation of _pass_. But everything's turned upside down, and all bets are off.

Eliot's wearing an expression that always makes Quentin's heart hurt, the one that's hesitant and hopeful and makes him look impossible young.

"I… don't know," he says. "How likely is it to go horribly wrong?"

Mike grins. "No chance. She'll do all the work."

El blows out a breath. "Promises, promises," he mutters, but walks out into the pen, anyway. Mike straightens, handing off the bottle and stepping around behind him. Eliot looks down at the bottle and glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow quirked high in apparent amusement. "This may _seem_ like one of those 'please, mister, teach me how to hit a ball' movie moments, but the phallic props don't usually come with a side of livestock."

Laughing, Mike shakes his head. "I'm just the safety net. She's little, but she's powerful. A headbutt from a hungry calf packs one hell of a punch." As if on cue, the calf stumbles to her feet and shuffles forward, her dark nose colliding with Eliot's shin and nudging up his leg.

"Oh," El says, and blinks, reaching down to palm the top of her rich rust head. "Well hello to you, too."

Quentin can feel Margo stiffen beside him, a stark reminder that she's still there. He shifts on his feet, trying to ignore the uneasiness that sets in at the sight of her clenched fists.

"I've never really thought about what he must've been like, back then," he mumbles. "But this is, I mean, it's kinda sweet, right?"

"Sure," she mutters, icy and low. "'Til you remember that Eliot's soft ass is over there falling in love with the fucking thing when Mayberry Mike is just fattening it up for slaughter."

Something twists in Quentin's gut before she's even stopped talking, makes his throat close and his head spin. Swallowing, he turns back to the feeding at hand.

"Give her a good rub across the neck, then up and down her spine," Mike is saying. "That'll get her primed, let her know it's time to eat. It's what her mama would do." He presses one hand to Eliot's back and the other around his hip, so he folds at the waist and bends a bit at the knee, then moves the bottle until it's tucked under El's arm and braced against his side. "Good. Now you want to get a hold of her head, right underneath her chin, and —"

The calf latches on, and Eliot's whole face lights up.

"Holy shit," he breathes, eyes big and bright for the second they cut over. "Bambi, are you seeing this?"

"I'm in a barn in the heart of hillbilly country," she says. "There is literally nothing else to see."

"You could get a better view, maybe help out a bit." Mike waves them over, his Southern charm holding on through Quentin's silence and Margo's scorn. "Don't be shy, she won't bite."

Margo rolls her eyes and crosses the room to the pen, arms folded across her chest, and Quentin follows quietly on her heels. The calf is even cuter up close, her black-rimmed eyes wide as she takes deep pulls from the bottle. Whatever's inside, it isn't quite milk — darker in color, almost creamy in consistency. It foams into bubbles at the corners of her mouth as she drinks, drips messily from her chin.

"We seem to have a spillage situation," El says.

Mike waves it off. "She's eager. It gets messy most of the time."

It's too hard to watch the wonder in Eliot's face, especially with Mike standing so close, one hand still braced on El's hip. Quentin glances over at Margo, expecting to see disgust, or at the very least, distinct annoyance. But she tilts her head a bit at the overflow with soft eyes and a sort of begrudging respect, rubbing the tip of the calf's perked ear between her finger and thumb.

"No shame, sweetie. Happens to the best of us."

The calf drinks until only about a fourth of the bottle is left, then butts her head against Eliot's knee and sleepily curls up in the straw. They file out of the room, Eliot stopping to wash his hands while Mike thanks the vet, and then they're back outside in full sun, where the temperature has ticked up a few more degrees.

Quentin's gotten used to the weather in LA, with its lack of discernable seasons, even as an east coast transplant. But even the heat is different here, thicker and rounder, almost solid, somehow — it soaks through his dark clothes and into his skin, until he feels like he's slowly suffocating.

But they don't get back in the truck. Mike starts them across the clearing, instead, toward a massive building with a rounded peak roof.

"Cattle may be our specialty," he says, "but beef isn't the only thing we raise here on the ranch."

"Okay," Margo scoffs. "If this is all buildup to some great big Babe reveal, let me stop you right there. Nobody is feeding any swine."

Mike pulls his brows together, taken aback and amused all at once. "Uh, noted. But no."

They close in on the wide-open entrance, where the path morphs from packed earth to brick pavers, and Quentin steps gratefully into the shade of a post and beam building, with a glass-walled room full of shelving and equipment on each side of the entrance and a long row of skylights set at the peak of the soaring ceiling above. But the bulk of the building is lined with wood and steel stalls along the brick aisle, with swing gates and barriers that scoop low in the center, and low, backless benches in between.

"We revamped the stables a few years back. Tack rooms, feed room, wash stalls, even an infrared camera system. We're not quite at capacity, but we can house twenty horses on property pretty comfortably."

Walking through, Quentin can believe it — the space stretches on for what seems like half a block, each stall wide and deep, with a Dutch door and a barred window at the back. He's had _bedrooms_ smaller than this.

The stalls are all spotless, and all empty. But there's daylight on the other end, an opening identical to the entrance, and he can see a sliver of fenced area off in the distance, with a handful of horses milling around in the grass.

"I had a couple hands saddle up a few of my favorites." Mike bites his lip, rubbing his hands together, and they emerge on the other side, Quentin squinting against the late morning sun. "So I _thought_ , since I had y'all here, you might want to ride out and meet the herd."

There are a dozen or so horses in a huge pen behind the stable, but there's a smaller paddock off to the left, like a little holding area. Mike climbs over the gate and hops down on the other side, where four horses are saddled and waiting — one a speckled gray, one a mottled mix of shades from auburn to espresso, one sleek and dark, like it stepped straight out of the pages of _Black Beauty_. It would be striking, if the last one in line — all rich brown coat and elf-blonde mane, with a tail that fell in waves and brushed the ground — wasn't legitimately the most beautiful creature that Quentin's ever seen.

He's still blinking at it when Margo snorts, reaching up to rage swat a fly.

"Oh, honey, no," she says. "I don't ride anything in these boots that isn't attached to a human."

Squinting, he tilts his head. "I mean, technically —"

"Quentin, finish that fucking sentence and you won't make it off this land alive."

He doesn't argue, mostly because it's _Margo_ , and he values all his appendages exactly where they are, but partly because he's not all that interested in the riding part, himself. He's far from the most coordinated person on the planet, and that's on solid ground, _without_ adding several hundred pounds of moving animal with a mind of its own.

But in the time it took to field Margo's threat and face his own inadequacy, Eliot has stepped forward to stand at the fence.

One of the horses perks up its ears and starts to walk over, slow but steady, almost curious. El reaches out with the back of his hand, like he's greeting a dog he's never met, and the horse snuffles at his fist until he flips his hand over, then pushes its nose into his palm, and… _oh_. The calf may have been a new experience, but _this_ , this is something El has obviously done before.

It's a side of Eliot he's never seen. A part of him that Quentin doesn't know.

"Hi, baby," he says around a smile, quiet and reverent, and that's all it takes — the horse steps forward, pushing its whole head into his hands.

El's laughter rolls through the air, deep and warm. Quentin's surprised he can hear it past the warning bells between his ears.

"Actually," he says stiffly, before he can stop himself, "we should probably call it a day."

Mike blinks, his smile falling a bit before it freezes in place. "It's not even noon," he replies. "We were gonna fire up the grill, have some lunch back at the house —"

"Yeah, it's just, I'm not, um. The biggest fan of horses?"

Eliot snorts, his attention still firmly elsewhere. "Really? Because last I checked, you had a six-foot shooting model of the fucking Cozy Horse standing in your spare bedroom."

Quentin shoves his hair behind one ear. "Well, yeah, but… that one has sentimental value."

"I'd like to go," Eliot says, and for a split second, Quentin's lungs are full of liquid relief. Then El looks over his shoulder, one hand still stroking down the side of the horse's neck. "On the ride, I mean. To meet the herd. From what I assume is a respectful distance."

"El —"

" _Quentin_. I got up at six. I just made a friend. I've seen all of _one cow_ , and at that size, she might only count as a fraction. What did we come all the way out here for, if not the full farm experience?"

Mike ducks his head, his smile back at full strength.

"You know, if y'all want to head out, it's no trouble at all," he says, amiable and more to Quentin than Margo. "I'll bring this one back. Eventually."

Margo rolls her eyes, bypassing him entirely. "I'm not just gonna _leave you here_ , Eliot. Your security's back at Hotel Hell, there's no way to sweep even a tenth of this place, and fuck knows what's lurking out there in the bushes."

"Bambi, if some intrepid reporter has been lying in wait for me to traipse through a field full of cows in Texas, then frankly, they deserve every frame they can get. It'll be fine, I promise." He tugs the key to the rental out of his pocket, playing keep away with the horse long enough to raise an eyebrow in Margo's direction. "Unless you wanted to stay."

They have one of their silent conversations across the distance, until Margo sighs and El tosses her the keys.

"Fine, go greet the goddamn cows," she mutters. "But if you fuck around on that horse and break your fucking neck, I will let Todd fully plan your funeral."

Mike calls for one of the men in the larger pen to take them back to the car, and Margo stalks off into the stable while he mounts the ridiculous fantasy film horse and watches Eliot hoist himself over the fence.

"It's been awhile," El says, and Mike shrugs.

"Just like riding a bike."

"And yet, still not the kind of riding I've done anywhere near recently." He runs his palm along the horse's back until it can't go any further, then puts one foot into the stirrup and swings himself smoothly into the saddle, patting the horse at the base of the neck before taking the reins in hand. "Well that went well. We're gonna be fine, aren't we, baby girl?"

One of the workers opens the gate to the paddock wide, and El looks down at Quentin as he goes by.

"Text me when you get back, okay?"

Quentin can't do anything but nod, and watch as Eliot smiles, subtly tips his hat, and starts off after Mike at a trot. With a deep breath, he reluctantly turns to retrace Margo's footsteps.

They're back in their dark SUV before he can say anything else, rolling down the windows to let the trapped heat escape. He plugs the address for the lodge into the navigation system, still feeling dizzy even though he's sitting down.

"Hey," he says, "how much would you say a place like this is worth?"

Margo sighs, head lolling on the back of the seat. "I don't know, Quentin, how much does the average cow cost?" She plugs her phone in to charge, tossing it onto the center console with more force than strictly necessary. "Leave it to El to find a fucking cowboy Kennedy."

The guard waves as they drive past the welcome center, and soon they're turning out onto the main road, listening to the drone of the GPS while Margo checks her messages. They're about halfway back before he breaks the silence.

"Do you think this was a good idea?" he asks quietly. And he knows the way it sounds, casual, carefully framed, but he isn't sure the question is about leaving El back at the farm at all.

She sets her phone in her lap and looks at him for a long moment.

"I think if you had ovaried up and opened your goddamn mouth, we wouldn't fucking be here. But it's a little late for all that now, isn't it?"

He tightens his hands on the wheel and turns the words over in his head.

He isn't sure that her answer is, either.

Eliot follows Mike out to the pastureland at a canter — it's moving day, Mike had explained, when all eight hundred head of cattle have to be herded from one grazing field to the other. _The Pecos to the Rio Grande_ , he'd said, because _of course_ they've christened their fields, and all the names are Texastastic.

But that had all been communicated before they'd picked up the pace, when they could still comfortably converse as their horses ambled across the grounds. Before Eliot was effectively alone with his thoughts.

It's exactly the sort of situation that would have led to complete and immediate avoidance, before he'd embarked on this southern journey of self-discovery. Now, he moves along with the motion of the horse from muscle memory, and lets himself really think about just how easy it was to fall back to form, to relax into the rhythm of riding and the feel of the reins in his hands. They hadn't had much by way of animals back on the farm — never pets, just a small apiary for harvesting honey and a coop full of chickens they kept for fresh eggs and a few feral cats that came and went as they pleased. But his father had been a penny pinching bastard, and for as long as Eliot can remember, he'd kept a plow horse housed in the old barn out back, just to keep his sons out in the fields and his tractor low on miles. Twice, Eliot had come home from school to find the barn empty, his father having sold off their aging horse before having to bear the expense of feeding it through another winter.

The last one they'd had is still the only thing that Eliot's ever been allowed to name.

When they reach the clearing just outside a fenced field, his horse drawing neck and neck with Mike's, he can see there are half a dozen hands at work already, manning the gates and barking out orders, a blue heeler circling back and forth on the perimeter. The grass rolls gently downhill into an endless field of green, until the land becomes a tree-lined silhouette against a clear blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds.

Eliot takes a deep breath and takes it all in, and suddenly the world feels weightless. Endless.

"You alright?"

When he turns to his left, Mike is watching him, equal parts curious and knowing.

"Yeah," Eliot says. "Just… taking a sec. Everything the light touches is your kingdom, huh?" He shakes his head, things making more sense now — queer or otherwise, Mike has the kind of confidence only old money can buy. "God, it looks like a movie out here. Like some spaghetti western version of what a working ranch should look like, complete with cute cattle dog."

"Well, it's real. In living Technicolor." Mike grins and quirks an eyebrow, his horse dancing a bit beneath him. "Feel like taking on a bit part?"

And that's how Eliot finds himself joining the back of the pack, helping round up the stragglers and keep defectors in line while Mike rides along beside him and calls out instructions. The cows go along pretty willingly, a steady stream of russet brown bodies with dark faces, and it only takes about an hour to get the last heads herded through the gate and happily grazing while the hands wrap up.

Eliot's phone buzzes against the bend below his hip, and he balances his weight on one leg long enough to pull it out of his pocket.

 _We made it in_ , Quentin has texted. _As a heads up, Margo may or may not drain every drop of hot water in the building._

It's the kind of text that usually leads to an easy back-and-forth between them, a virtual substitute for what happens when they're together. Eliot's used to settling in wherever he is, smiling at his screen as a stand-in for Q's expressive face. Even now, he can see that Quentin's sending something else — the active typing bubble appears, dancing through dots for a long moment, before it goes away again, and in its place pop up three little words.

_Be careful, okay?_

"If you're gettin' hungry, we can head back," Mike says, startling his eyes away from the screen, "but if you're not in any hurry, we could stay out a while."

Eliot glances back to his phone. From anyone else, that message might be a simple instruction, maybe a warning, if it was from Margo. From Q, it's an open invitation to talk. But there are things that need to be said, things started in an earlier conversation and stalled by a convenient cue to exit. Breaking that dam will only bring the flood, and now is not the time. Or the place.

He leans across the saddle again, tucks his phone back in his pocket.

"No rush," he says, returning Mike's easy smile. "I'm all yours."

They cut across the newly cleared Pecos pasture at a lazy stroll, wandering from the worn path and through a smattering of trees until they reach a picturesque stretch of winding water. Mike slides easily from the saddle, leading his horse down the bank on foot, and Eliot flips the reins forward and follows suit, his own mount more like walking with him than being led.

"This is feeling very _Brokeback_ , Michael."

Mike laughs and cringes all at once. "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult."

Eliot hums. "Much like the movie, little bit of both."

They watch the horses take long drinks from the slow-moving current while Mike shares more about the inner workings of the ranch — securing business with local butchers, finding vendors for the hides, getting stray calves ready for auction.

"Thank you for that," Eliot chimes in. "I didn't want to think too hard about the fate of baby Bessie while I was bottle feeding her breakfast."

"Come on, now, " Mike says. "You know better than to name them. That way, you never get attached. You know you don't get to keep it."

Eliot thinks of the barn he'd left behind in Whiteland, with its chestnut Halflinger that was the smallest horse they'd ever had on the farm. She'd been sweet, if a little skittish, with a flowing flaxen mane that reminded him of a cartoon he'd once watched on his grandmother's ancient television. Of a beautiful unicorn, the last of her kind, magically trapped in the body of a human.

He'd named her Thea, and his father had been none the wiser.

He clears his throat, hand tightening on the lead. "So are we going to talk about the elephant in the room? Or rather, the horse in the pasture?"

Mike is nothing if not quick, and his eyes cut over to his colt — a heart-stoppingly gorgeous chocolate Palomino, the Beyoncé of Quarter Horses, a horse no farmer worth his salt would ever use to herd fucking livestock.

He chuckles, reaching up to scrub a hand over the side of his face. "Truth be told, Jericho here is a horse I've raised to show. I figured he might also help me show off a bit." He pats the colt on the neck, face flushed with pride. "He's still young, but he'll be a real beast someday."

Eliot hums. "He's beautiful."

"That he is." Mike's voice is low and his eyes are loaded, and Eliot has to look away. "You know, I handpicked that bay stallion back at the stables especially for you to ride. I'm a little surprised you went with the mare."

The horse in question has stopped drinking to amble back into his space. Harriet — so named, Eliot can only assume, for the vaguely lightning-shaped blaze between her eyes.

He rubs his hand down the nose of the sweet sooty buckskin, lets her nuzzle into his shoulder, and thinks of the way she'd picked her head up when he'd walked up to paddock, the way she'd come to him without being called.

"What can I say? I guess I'm just a sucker for big brown eyes."

They lead the horses up the ridge and tie them off on a nearby tree, his fingers forming the slipknot without really trying, then stretch out in the grass overlooking the water. Eliot tips his head back so the sun can hit his face and Mike settles on his left, one leg bent up with his arm propped over his knee, and they're quiet for a while — long enough for Eliot to think about how different this is from Whiteland, how it has all the things he'd actually loved, the life and the land and the space to get lost, and none of the things that made him afraid of the act of existing.

How Logan Kinnear had died in a creek not entirely unlike this one.

"It's funny," Mike says, "I've done my fair share of acting, myself."

Eliot raises both eyebrows out of sheer relief, pulled from back from the edge of memories both good and bad alike. He can believe it — the guy's got charisma to spare. "Oh yeah?"

Mike nods. "School productions, mostly. A few regional commercials. Spent a few months with the local community theater, before it took too much time from the farm. Just did the one musical. Which… flopped pretty hard, to tell you the truth."

Well, community theater. Them's the breaks.

"What was the show?"

" _Oklahoma_ ," he says, chuckling deep in his chest. "In hindsight, I see where we went wrong."

They laugh together then, the sound carried away on the wind.

Eliot can't quite imagine this man as a cog in the Hollywood machine, and isn't sure that he ever wants to. He'd sworn off other actors after Sebastian, who'd watched him with soft eyes and touched him too tenderly, who'd breathed _don't you see, we're the same_ into his skin. Eliot had shaken his head, weighed Seb's circumstances against his own impossibilities, said _we're really, really not,_ and fallen into his bed, anyway. Then he'd gotten too comfortable, and stayed for too long, and almost forgotten all the whys of what they were. So now his number rule is that actors are off limits, and — one long weekend with Lee Pace notwithstanding — he's mostly managed to hold himself to it.

But imagining Mike in his world is exactly the opposite of what he's doing here, when the whole point of all this is to figure out who he is outside of it.

He leans back on his elbows to feel the solid ground beneath, looks up at the endless expanse of bright blue sky. And when Mike looks over with a smile and leans in to kiss him, the field of blue becoming something else entirely, Eliot closes his eyes and lets him.

" _Fuck_."

Quentin swipes a hand down his face, as if it will help at all. He's been trying to write for hours. He's ignored a string of increasingly high-strung texts from Zelda, plus a few from Poppy on yet another new number he'd scrambled to block immediately. He has not been waiting for El to get back.

Except for the way that he's _totally waiting for El to get back_.

There's a blinking cursor mocking him from his computer screen, and it's still somehow better than the nearly-blank page in the new journal sitting next to his knee, where he'd thought that his confessions might come easier if he had a script to work from. But he'd only made it as far as _Eliot, I_ before the words had dried up and died.

Frustrated, he shifts his focus from Final Draft to Firefox, pulls up the red carpet photos from the _Travelers_ premiere, and proceeds to spend the next fifteen minutes making himself utterly miserable. Mike looks so natural at Eliot's side, completely at-ease as he smiles wide for the photogs.

That could never be Quentin, has never been — attempting to grin and bear five _Fillory_ premieres had only ended up with him grimacing and fidgeting, anxious and uncomfortable, overwhelmed by the cacophony of faceless voices calling his name from behind the camouflage of cameras.

It isn't just that Mike looks good. It's that the two of them look good together.

He closes the computer and shoves it aside, the burger Margo had brought in at some point sitting in his stomach like lead.

Every attempt at distraction after is a bust; the TV only gets about twelve channels, he's checked and answered every new email in his inbox, and a quick scroll through Twitter has only told him that _#Cinderfella_ is fucking trending, with visuals he hadn't come across in his earlier search — dark videos of them dancing at the afterparty, grainy shots of them laughing over dinner. There's even one from a booth in the diner right here in Brakebills, with Eliot smiling softly at Mike's hand over his.

The hashtag is flooded with fans posting fawning tweets — _OMG #WaughffleArmy HOW ARE THEY THIS ADORABLE I'M SCREAMING JUST KILL ME NOW_ and _Me: Love at first sight is a myth / Eliot and his cute contest boyfriend: *exist for five seconds* / Me: What do you mean they're not married yet, they were clearly MADE FOR EACH OTHER_ and _So @theeliotwaugh is out here moving to MAGA country for his brand new bae and I can't even get a man to take me to McDonalds?_

Great. On top of everything, word of the Texas trip is officially out.

He'd send El a warning text, but he hasn't even gotten an answer to the last one.

Briefly, he considers calling Julia. Laying out everything that's happened, and everything in his head, and letting her tell him exactly what to do.

Maybe if he'd listened to her before, like _at any time_ before this miserable moment, he wouldn't be in this mess.

Groaning, he sets his phone aside and gives up entirely. Turns off the light, lays down in the scratchy sheets with the horrible comforter pulled over his head, and tries to pretend that he isn't listening for familiar footsteps.

He's drifting in the haze between sleep and consciousness when the footsteps finally come, unmistakable in their long, steady stride, and a glance at the blaring blue of the bedside clock tells him just how late it is.

Quentin holds his breath as the sound slows at his door, hitching to a stop for a brief but endless moment before continuing on to Eliot's own.

It isn't entirely surprising — it _is_ late, after all, and Quentin's room is dark and quiet. But they've done late for years, late is kind of their thing. They don't give a shit about late.

Realistically, El will shower off a day filled with sun and sweat and ill-thought Stetsons, let the water wash away whatever memories had come along with them. Then he'll shoot Quentin a text and come back to Quentin's door and sprawl across Quentin's squeaky mattress like it's where he belongs, and they'll do whatever passes for wine and puzzle night in this terrible Texas motel until one or both of them is too tired to keep talking, because _that's what he and Eliot_ _do_.

He grabs his phone off the nightstand, props it on the stack of flat pillows beneath his head, and waits for the inevitable text.

And waits.

Any minute now.

Eliot is shifting carefully in his booth and swallowing a double dose of ibuprofen with a swig of sweet tea — because he can't very well use coffee, can he, and this stuff is kind of like crack — when Quentin comes into the diner.

He stops when he spots Eliot, half-blocking the entrance, and only comes over when Eliot literally waves. Eliot has already flipped the extra coffee cup by the time Q slides into the seat across, and he glances around to flag down any server with a pot.

"Hey," Q mumbles. "No Margo?"

"Mmm, no." A hand darts in to fill Q's cup, even tops off his own, before the waitress disappears without a word. Honestly, LA may have all the fine dining bells and whistles, but there's something to be said for the no nonsense approach. "I did attempt a courtesy wake-up call, but the response it got cannot be repeated in polite company. Or in most maximum-security prisons."

Quentin's answering smile is more like a wince, which he quickly hides behind a big gulp of black coffee. If it burns going down, he doesn't let on.

"Actually," Eliot says, and stops when Quentin makes his _correct me if I'm wrong_ face, the one that's carefully casual to mask the fact that he's bothered as all hell.

"Okay, but… don't you think there should be somebody here with you?"

"Maybe there should," Eliot says, shifting again. "And if that is indeed the case, thank you for volunteering your services."

Something about the energy here is strange, _off_ , and he isn't exactly making things any better. But Mike wasn't wrong — he has absolutely underestimated the power of Quentin's scowl.

"You know what I meant," Q says flatly. "Why did we bring a damn security team down here if you weren't going to use them? Do you even know what they did with you gone all day yesterday?"

"No clue," Eliot answers, "and for the love of god, please don't tell me."

He takes a sip of his refilled coffee, the cream and sugar ratios wildly off now. _Yesterday_ had resonated in the familiar key of Judgmental Quentin, but it's clearly about more than Kady and Penny.

"I probably should have let you know when I got back."

Quentin snorts, staring into the dregs of his cup. "It was late."

"It was," Eliot concedes, though he's not sure when _late_ became a problem. "I would've stopped in, but I thought you might be writing. I… didn't want to bother you."

Nodding, Quentin tears the paper from Eliot's straw into tiny strips. "Yeah," he says. "Thanks."

He lets it hang there on its own, with no further explanation or self-deprecating doubt, and of everything that's happened in the short time since he sat down, that is the most disturbing. Jesus, when had they lost the ability to just _talk to each other_?

Of course, it could have been the day they got here, when Quentin had asked him to do exactly this, and Eliot had shut down and run away, after asking him to be the equivalent of a walking text message.

Maybe this is just too little, too late.

He braces his hands on the edge of the table and twists into a slightly different position, feels it pull along every muscle below mid back and throb thick and dull through his torso. The movement draws Quentin's eyes back up, sharp and assessing. But where there would normally be questions, or alarm, or the shrewd look of someone who knows exactly what's wrong and has already anticipated everything he needs to make it better, there is only silence, and that's worse than anything he's felt today.

It's ironic, though, that for once, it isn't Quentin who's squirming. That Eliot is the one who can't sit still.

Or maybe it just goes to show how far the world has been upended.

"You okay?" Q finally asks, so he has that, at least, though the words seem detached, devoid of all meaning. Eliot tries a smile, and it feels foreign on his face.

"Don't mind me. I think I'm just achy from being back in the saddle again."

Reaching up to shove his hair behind his ear, Quentin shakes his head. "Okay, I know the innuendo is your schtick, or whatever, but I don't actually need all the sordid details, Eliot."

Thrown for a loop, all Eliot can do is laugh. Because if he thinks too hard about the implication — that, instead of meandering through the fields and meeting the McCormick family and drinking apple pie moonshine around the fire pit, Q clearly assumes he'd spent the night fucking Mike through the nearest mattress — he just might break down and cry.

"The _literal_ _saddle_ , Quentin," he says. "This isn't a case of 'save a horse, ride a cowboy.'"

"Oh my god." Quentin groans, smearing both hands down his face. "Are you capable of taking _anything_ seriously? Really. Just for, like, five seconds."

Eliot inhales, and the pain in his core is suddenly everywhere.

He raises his hands, reminds himself that this is a Quentin who wants boundaries. And however far the line had been when they'd started this marathon, however long they've kept up this pace, he may have just crossed it, and stumbled off course.

"I have some character defects," he says, tongue darting out to steady the shake in his lower lip. "I'm working on it. But all jokes aside, Q, if I've said or done anything that truly made you uncomfortable, then I sincerely apologize. That was never my intention, honestly, you're the last person I'd ever want to… _really_ , I'm sorry."

Quentin slumps against the back of the booth, looking a little deflated at the edges.

"No, that's," he stammers, and squeezes his eyes shut. " _Goddammit._ "

Eliot's right with him there. Even for two people with their talking track record, this is a hell of a conversation to have over coffee.

Q opens his eyes again, really looks at him for the first time this morning.

"El," he says, soft, and over his shoulder, Mike breezes through the diner's front door. "I —"

"Well good morning. Fancy meetin' you here."

Eliot makes himself look up at Mike, who's grinning down at them from the side of the table, sunny and bright and completely oblivious, right on time with the worst timing imaginable. "Hi."

Mike slides into his side of the booth, pressing his lips to the hinge of Eliot's jaw and putting a copy of an honest-to-god newspaper down on the table. "Front page," he says, lips still skimming Eliot's skin. "You've really made it now."

The paper is roughly the thickness of the _LA Times_ Sunday real estate section, and it must be a slow news day, indeed — the story above the fold bears a picture of his face, taken right here in the diner, under the headline _Waugh, Texas Ranger — Star Brings a Bit of Hollywood to Brakebills._

"So I see," Eliot replies, because really, what else is there to say?

Mike sits back, signaling for coffee then stretching one arm along the back of the booth. "Hey, Quentin," he greets, far too bright for the hour — he may actually be a mythical Morning Person. "Didn't know you were joining us."

Across from Eliot, Q has gone pale and tense and still, his eyes iced over.

"Sorry, I…" His voice flickers out, hollow and far away, before his mouth twists and he drops his eyes to the table. "Didn't know he was waiting for you."

This is where Eliot would absolutely say _I did try to mention that, before your face decided it was more important that I let you be a brat,_ if there weren't a bolt of something sharp stabbing through his spine, at both the words and the way he says them, an ache that has nothing to do with horse-sore muscles.

"You were… Quentin, what were you about to say?"

"Nothing. Doesn't matter." He slips out of the booth, his hair a veil that half hides his face. "I'm just gonna, um… Enjoy your breakfast."

He seems to second guess himself on the way out, freezing halfway between the booth and the exit and awkwardly turning back to the table.

"Did you need me for anything else?"

 _I need you for everything,_ Eliot almost answers. _Always, always_.

But this isn't just a Quentin who wants boundaries, this is a Quentin who wants _out_ , who's finally had enough of Eliot's shit.

So Eliot just swallows and shakes his head, shell-shocked, and watches him walk out the door.


	3. They Don't Fool Me, You've Been Lonely Too Long

The main drag in downtown Brakebills is quaint and quiet, a wide street lined with sweet little storefronts and tree-dotted sidewalks and parking meters that only take coins. The diner anchors one end, and Quentin finds that he's wandered all the way to the other without really remembering how he got here.

There are three stars set in the sidewalk in front of him, like the world's shortest Walk of Fame. When he looks up, he's standing in front of an old theater, complete with gilded gold box office, beneath a marquee that reads _The World in the Walls_.

He can't even begin to calculate the odds. And he hasn't felt like he could escape in Fillory in a long time, but there's nothing else to do, nowhere else to hide, and this is _literally_ a sign.

So he buys a ticket from the attendant in the box office booth, momentarily marveling at the price — he couldn't get a cup of coffee in LA for the cost of a morning matinee in Brakebills — and ducks into the cool dimness inside.

With the house lights still on and twenty minutes 'til showtime, he can see there's only one other person in the theater, a fresh-faced woman with brown hair and kind eyes, who seems to be calculating the best seat in the house. She catches him watching from his spot in the back row when she gets up to change seats for the third time, and instead of being embarrassed, she gives him a smile and a little wave, then settles into the seat she stays in for the show.

Quentin hasn't watched one of these in forever. It's still sort of strange to see himself as Martin, all dark hair and glasses and period clothing, but it's even stranger to see himself at fourteen, face stretched a few stories high, full of wonder at his first glimpse of Fillory.

That part, at least, hadn't been acting — production had kept all three young Chatwins off set until they could roll cameras and capture their reactions on film, and it had been… well, _magical_ , that sense of wonder, the overwhelming awe at seeing words from his childhood brought to life. It's always been sort of his defining moment, the moment he still looks back on as something he wanted to capture and script and make possible for others with words of his own.

God, whatever happened to that Quentin Coldwater?

When he pushes through the theater's heavy doors and steps into the lobby, the sweeping strings of the _Fillory_ theme on his heels, he feels more lost than he had been when he went in. He hasn't been Martin Chatwin in almost a decade, had lost that mask long ago. But the past few weeks, especially the days since they've been in Brakebills, it's seemed as if he's in danger of losing himself now, too.

Or maybe it just feels that way, since he's so clearly losing Eliot.

Just before he reaches the exit, a voice calls out from behind him. "Oh, hey, excuse me!"

He steps reflexively to one side, but instead of moving past him, someone falls into step on his left — oh, the girl from the theater. Which he should have known, since there'd been no one else in there. "Oh god, hi," she says, pleasant and bright, if curiously confused. "Hello. Hi."

"Uh." He blinks, one hand on the door. "Hi."

"Sorry, I just… I wasn't expecting you to actually _stop_." Her hands flit around like nervous birds, until she presses them both to her chest. "But I saw you and kind of couldn't believe that you were here. Not, well yes, here in Brakebills, but also, you know…"

Her fingers fly again, gesturing broadly at everything, before she finally settles her hands against her collarbone.

"I'm Fen. Cyllell."

"Quentin." He looks around the empty lobby, then back to her eager face. "Were you hoping to meet Eliot? Because I, I'm pretty sure he's. Busy."

She bursts into bubbly, incredulous laughter. " _Oh my god, no_ ," she says. "Yeah, no. That's hilarious. Obviously, I know who you are. I mean…" She hooks one thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the theater doors, wearing an indescribable expression. " _Hello_. It's just, I've been doing this for… well, _a while_ , now, and nobody ever comes. And then, out of nowhere somebody does, and it's _you_. How did you even find out about this? I gave up on the ads, like, weeks ago."

Quentin shakes his head, his brows tugging together and his hand falling from the door. "Okay, I'm… confused. What are we talking about here?"

"The screenings. For the BFF?" She blinks into his blank face with wide eyes that say _duh_. "The Brakebills Fillory Fanclub."

"The Br— is that a thing?"

"It is!" she chirps. "I should know. I founded it."

Her smile falters for the first time, and her face seems to fall just a bit, as if she's suddenly unsure of this whole approach. Which… is valid, probably, since this is frankly kind of strange. But the way she's looking at him now — like she's second guessing ever stopping him and calling attention to herself and revealing her unbridled enthusiasm — makes his heart hurt a little, and it hadn't been in the greatest shape to begin with.

Quentin has had questionable experiences with film fans in the past — not the good-hearted cosplayers or the congoers who'd hand him their fanart to sign at autograph sessions, but the ones who would stalk him at school and sell his signed merch on eBay and tag him in their hate posts on Twitter. But he can tell what kind of fan Fen is, can read her love for Fillory all over her face.

It's exactly the kind of fan he'd been himself, once.

He takes a deep breath, musters up a smile that smooths out her expression again. "I could use some fresh air," he says. "Wanna take a walk and tell me about it?"

They make their way out of the theater, Fen pointing out the occasional ice cream shop or hardware store in between explaining the concept of Fillory Fridays — screening one film from the series each week, with an optional discussion for attendees afterward. "Like a film club," she says as they stroll slowly down the sidewalk, "just, you know, with the same set of films. On rotation." She bites her lip, then smiles wide to hide it. "It hasn't really caught on yet."

"Takes time to get going, I guess." He pushes at his hair, regretting the day's black shirt the closer it gets to high noon. "Um, how long has it been?"

"Two years?" She cringes, but even that is sort of a smile. "Since I started the BFF, anyway. There were three of us at first, until Fray went away to school. But Bayler fell into the Fillory Reddit, and it sort of fed all his worst fanboy tendencies. Last I heard he was randomly following the Foo Fighters around the world. So now it's…" She shrugs, sheepish. "Just me."

They step off a curb and into a brick-laid crosswalk, jogging a bit to beat the light, and on the other side, Quentin finds himself opening his mouth.

"I used to think that," he says. "That it was just me, I mean. The books were my favorites, growing up — my dad used to read them to me at night. Every night. And he'd act it out, and do the voices, everything you want from a bedtime story when you're young. Except I never really… outgrew them, you know?"

Ted Coldwater hadn't either, in his own way — packing up the house post-funeral, Quentin had found three separate sets of the movie tie-in editions, the ones with his face on every cover.

Fen nods with wide eyes, wrapped up in the story but somehow sympathetic.

"So, when everybody else was… I don't know, playing Pokémon, or whatever, I was the kid still obsessed with a series of children's books. Which made me, just, super popular."

Her laughter is a kind sound, laced with understanding, so he takes it as his cue to continue.

"The movies started out as a joke. This… raging dick from the debate club told me they were doing a casting call for the series in New York. Said I could finally live out all my childhood wet dreams. And I knew it was a prank, that he just wanted to laugh at the thought of me wasting a weekend on more _Fillory_ bullshit, but. I still begged my dad to take me into the city. It was like… if there was a chance of being even a small part of something I loved that much, I couldn't not. Try."

He remembers every moment of that initial audition — Martin meeting his first questing creature. They'd pretty much lifted the dialogue straight from the page, he hadn't even needed the script.

His feelings for Fillory have changed since then. In a way, everything about it seems cursed — Plover had been posthumously outed as a pedophile, the real-life Martin had grown up to be a sociopath who was eventually executed in Rhinemann Prison, and they'd lost James to his own drug-fueled demons. He'd found Jane, who'd been the one to adapt the books for film — _something good had to come of all this ugliness, Quentin_ , she'd told him once. _At least I can rewrite my part in the story._

She had taken him under her wing, become his mentor and his ally and his biggest cheerleader, and died in a freak accident just before he'd started at Columbia. She'd never even seen the final film.

Filming had taken half of childhood, and life behind the curtain had taken an even bigger toll. But for all that Fillory had taken, it had also given him a path for the rest of his life, and the means to take care of his dad. Had given him Julia and Alice and _Eliot_. And he wouldn't trade that for the world.

"I thought it was just me, for a long time," he tells Fen. "And every time I meet people like you, it's kind of a nice reminder that it wasn't."

She breathes out, wet and wavering, and gives him a wide, shaky smile. "I, ugh, I'm sorry, I have to go get ready for work," she says, swiping at her eyes. "But… I'm really glad you came today, Quentin. And I hope I see you again. You know, while you're in town."

When he echoes the sentiment, around her short, sudden hug, he's a little surprised to find that he actually means it.

When Mike had smiled and suggested that they meet him at his local for drinks, Eliot had accepted on the group's behalf, then prepared himself for an evening in some hole-in-the-wall with watered-down drinks and suspiciously sticky floors. And while the cinema-worthy sight of Mike's sprawling ranch had been somewhat unexpected, Eliot is entirely unprepared for the first glimpse of the man's go-to watering hole.

Sitting in the center of a large gravel lot, the bar looks like something straight out of the Old West, with wood planked walls and wagon wheels along the roof and an actual row of hitching posts for horses.

"Holy shit," Quentin says. "Is it seriously called The Wellspring?"

"That's what the sign says," Eliot answers, "so one would assume so."

To be fair, that only applies to the painted sign above the overhang. The one in the window reads _BEER BEER BEER_ in bright fits of flashing neon, so really, it could go either way. But Q's delighted little face shines even brighter, the most Eliot's gotten out of him since that disastrous scene in the diner — and honestly, thank fuck, he hasn't seen those dimples in _days_.

Then they file through the swinging saloon doors and into a scene from the set of _Road House._

There is no _if this were a movie_ to contemplate here — the movie's already been made. And he's generally on board with all things Swayze, but this might be a bit much.

It's bigger than it looks from the outside, a mix of low tables and high tops scattered through the space and a small stage between support beams anchoring a decently sized dance floor. There's an old jukebox in the corner blasting early Travis Tritt, a side room with glimpses of green felt that can only be for shooting pool, and at the back, a low-walled ring with a bucking bronco machine at its center.

Eliot can barely make out the bar where it stretches down the center of one wall, worn but well-stocked. But once they wind their way through the rowdy crowd — curiouser and curiouser — a wide-eyed milk-and-honey brunette positively lights up and calls out Quentin's name from behind the bar top.

He turns to Q, one eyebrow up. "Been off befriending the locals, have we?"

"Or something," Quentin says, smirking a bit, and for a second, the air feels like _them_ again. But Mike tugs Eliot toward a table while Quentin heads to the bar, and that's kind of that for the moment.

They settle into a pair of hard wooden chairs, Mike thumbing at the open collar of Eliot's chambray shirt.

"This looks good on you."

"Thanks," Eliot says, aiming for ease and hitting disinterest, instead. It'd be bad enough that he hasn't worn this thing since Quentin spent an afternoon in it, but truth be told, it hasn't even been washed.

The boy in question is leaning over the edge of the bar, elbows propped on the gleaming wood top as he talks with both hands.

"Since this is your regular haunt, the cocktail snob in me demands that I ask — are the bartenders up to snuff, or do I need to stick with something simple?"

"I can't guarantee they're up to your big city standards," Mike answers, eyes dancing, "but you won't have to resort to the likes of _beer_ , if that's what you're askin'." He glances over as well, one hand rubbing over his thigh. "Looks like Quentin's got a pretty good bead on things already. Fen's probably the best of the bunch."

Q is saying something that makes the brunette — _Fen_ , apparently — laugh and lean in to slap his arm, and Eliot locks his jaw and looks away.

"Good to know."

A few rounds, some small talk, and several questionable song selections later — three draft domestics for Mike and two surprisingly palatable Old Fashioneds for Eliot, who still objects to beer on general principle — half the bar is watching Kady reverse cowgirl the mechanical bull without the aid of her hands, while the other half is watching Margo hold court on a saddle stool at the bar.

Eliot is watching Quentin, who's playing darts all by himself.

He's objectively terrible at it, which he undoubtedly knows, since his face is a scowling little storm cloud. Q's inability to mask his moods is one of those things that Eliot's always found hopelessly endearing, but that's not really saying much, since that list is at least a mile long.

Cringing, Quentin pulls several darts from the edges of the board — plus one from the wall beside it — and they lock eyes when he turns to walk back, unexpectedly, before Eliot can fix his damn face. He's not sure what Q sees, but whatever it is makes him stutter to a stop, and they're both caught there, the two of them connected across empty space, in a moment that feels thick and endless.

Then Mike raps his knuckles on the table, waving an _earth to Eliot_ hand in front of his face and snapping the tether between them.

Mike chuckles, good-natured, but he scoots his chair close and glances back at Quentin, who goes right back to his darts.

"I get the distinct impression he doesn't like me all that much."

Eliot snorts. "Who, Quentin? I wouldn't take it personally. Q has genuinely liked about a dozen people in the time that I've known him, and about half of those people have been fictional. Some days I'm not entirely sure that he likes _me_."

He swallows, feeling the blow of his words land a little too close to home — at least two of those days have happened since they've been in Brakebills. But Mike screws his face into something like a smile, slightly patronizing but also slightly bewildered.

Eliot's almost positive this is what _bless your heart_ actually looks like.

"You really are precious, aren't you?"

"Well, I try."

He's also a little confused. But Mike's smile turns genuine and he leans over to kiss him, and Eliot makes himself stop thinking for a moment, and everything is pleasant and warm, if a little beer sour, until someone grabs a handful of his hair and fucking pulls.

"Hi," Margo says, fist still full of curls and holding his head back, "I'm out."

"Oh?" He blinks. "Don't tell me you've already found some sweet Southern thing to ride hard and put away wet." For a second, her eyes flick to Q's new friend — Fran? Fern? — their little Disney princess of a bartender, which is very interesting indeed. "Ah. The other way around."

He's pretty sure Q won't mind — he's all about _connection_ , but on attraction alone, his tastes tend more toward the Elsas than the Belles — but before he can call over to the dartboard to confirm, he catches Quentin out of the corner of his eye, trying his hardest to shoulder his way through crush of the crowd toward the little cowboy's room in the back.

When he turns his attention back to their table, Mike seems to be — a hair halfheartedly — trying to convince Margo to stick around.

Since his big sell is all the impending _line dancing_ , there's approximately zero chance in hell.

"C'mon," he's saying, with a taunt in his voice that could actually end in castration, "you look like you can handle it."

"Oh, I would motherfucking _murder_ that shit," Margo purrs. "But I'm saving up my energy for something that ends with a bang, not a yeehaw."

"Now, Bambi," Eliot says, "you say that as if there won't also be banging in the beginning and all through the middle."

Mike throws in the towel and excuses himself from the table, and Margo leans down to smack a kiss in the center of Eliot's forehead.

"Watch your shit," she warns, curling her fingers around his cheek. "And for fuck's sake, dial down the PDA. We may be hanging on the hairy edge of Ballsack America, but everybody in here has a camera in their pocket."

"Yes, ma'am." She gives him a look, and he raises an eyebrow. "Please. Like you're not gonna make little miss _Coyote Ugly_ moan it for you later."

She saunters away with a shit-eating grin, and — _bingo_ — ducks out the door with her pretty little princess in tow.

Well, good for her.

Eliot sits back in his seat and polishes off his drink, watching Penny hustle some unsuspecting bastard at pool. It hits him, then, that he's in a dive bar in Texas with dead animals on the walls, where no one's asked for a selfie or an autograph since their second round and no one's paying a single shred of attention to him now.

Figuratively, he's about as far from Hollywood as he's going to get. But something is still roiling in his chest, unsettled. Unbearable.

He's fine without the fawning, more than fine without a camera in his face.

But he isn't remotely fine without Q.

The walls of the bathroom must be thicker than they look — the blaring music from the bar is muffled in here, and Quentin can actually hear himself think.

At the moment, he isn't sure that's a good thing.

He carefully washes his hands, watches the water run pink — the skin on his palm is broken, but barely, and the little round puncture isn't too deep. It's sort of surprising, honestly, that the wound isn't worse, when this is just… the way shit goes, for him. He'd hit an honest-to-god bullseye, for the first and likely last time in his life, and felt the rush of it in a way he'll probably hate himself for later. But it figures that he'd automatically turn to check whether El had been watching, only to be greeted with the sight of him happily making out with Mike, and be so simultaneously startled and stung that he'd _stabbed himself in the goddamn hand_.

It'd been bad enough when it was just paranoia and dread and his overactive imagination running away with him. But seeing it up close and personal, watching all his wild hopes slip away, had been harder than he ever could've guessed.

And just because his life is _perfect_ , in the _giant cosmic joke_ sense, of course Mike has picked this exact moment to take a bathroom break of his own.

Quentin freezes, one hand still held under the stream of running water. Their eyes meet in the mirror before Mike's even closed the door, and it's the polar opposite of that intense, incredible, indefinable moment he'd had with Eliot earlier, the one that had made every inch of his skin buzz with awareness. _This_ , this is awkward and charged and kind of creepy, given the venue, and he's thankful when Mike starts moving again.

Except it's to come up and stand right next to him, leaning back to the wall next to the sink.

"It seems like maybe we've gotten off on the wrong foot," he says, and Quentin finally blinks.

"What… would be the right foot?"

He feels irrationally cornered, caged, which only gets worse when Mike crosses his arms and pivots off the wall to one shoulder.

"I'm gonna level with you here, Quentin — I thought winning that contest was pure dumb luck, but everything after has felt a hell of lot like fate. Especially havin' Eliot here in Brakebills."

Quentin finally turns off the faucet and turns to the paper towel dispenser, mostly so he can see anything other than Mike.

He shrugs while he wipes his hands dry. "Okay?"

"Look," Mike says behind him, "I suspect I know why you're not my biggest fan. And I sympathize, really I do."

The pain in Quentin's palm pulses outward, stabbing everywhere at once. Crushing the wet paper towel in the curl of his fist, he pivots back to face Mike again. "Is there a reason why we're having this conversation?"

Mike nods. "Because if we're gonna get along going forward, we need to be able to have any conversation at all. So I'd really appreciate it if you'd cut me some slack here, Quentin. If only for Eliot's sake."

He says it all with just enough of a smile, just enough down-home Southern hospitality, that it throws Quentin for a loop, even as _going forward_ grates on every nerve. _You don't know shit about Eliot_ , he wants to answer. But his broken heart is not Mike's problem, no matter how much pity the guy might have. And if this is what Eliot wants, what he came here searching for, the least Quentin can do is not fuck it up for him.

So he throws up his hands, and tosses the wilted paper towel in the trash on the way back down. "Uh… yeah, fine," he mutters, heading for the door. "Let's… do that, then."

Halfway to the hallway, his traitorous brain rebels, and he spins back to the bathroom again.

"No, you know what, it's not. It's not fine."

Mike straightens, looking caught and fairly confused. But Quentin has held back too much, held his tongue for too long, and he can only take a deep breath and push both hands through his hair and make way for the words clawing their way up his throat to come spilling out in a rush.

"Here's the thing — Eliot isn't… just, _fuck_ , I know you're a fan, or whatever, and yeah, he's rich and famous and kinda looks like he wandered out of a pornographic Renaissance painting, but. He's a _real person_ , okay, he's more than some part he's playing for the cameras."

And he tries to take a step back, but he can feel it coming — the itch and the rush and the lightheaded haze that comes with what El's always called a Quentin Coldwater Monologue, complete with accompanying hand choreography.

"El is… he's sweet, and funny, and generous," he starts, "and kind of painfully genuine once you get past the carefully crafted layer of bullshit. He's completely blind to his own best qualities, but the first person to recognize them in everyone else. He actually listens when you talk, really _listens_ , like there's nothing more important in the world to him, and nowhere else that he'd rather be. And he's constantly pretending he doesn't give a shit about people, about _anything_ , when really, he cares so goddamn much he practically glows with it, and… and it's sort of beautiful, watching him be such a bad actor for once."

The stream of consciousness finally comes to a stop, though the words seem to echo off the walls. He feels eerily empty, scraped down and hollowed out, but he doesn't feel any _better_ , not when he's finally blurted out how he feels in a bathroom in a bar to the last person in the world who needed to hear it.

Not when said person is staring at him with a face full of sympathy, with a wince that's knowing but not unkind.

God, he feels like such an idiot.

"Oh, hey," Mike says, "Quentin —"

"No, I —" Quentin swallows, and more than anything, what he feels is fucking _sick_. "Just… thought you should know."

Spinning on his heel, he makes a beeline out of the bathroom, shoving his way through the drinking, dancing crowd until he can see the sky, where he laces his hands behind his neck and paces restlessly across the lot, trying to stop the loop of playback in his head.

And when he runs out of steam and stumbles into the bushes and heaves the contents of his stomach in the gravel and grass, well, at least there's one moment in this whole goddamn mess when he's honestly grateful to be alone.

Eliot pushes through the door and into his room, Mike trailing in right behind him. He's feeling that last cocktail more than he cares to admit — apparently four days of acute self-awareness is all it takes to make him a total lightweight.

"I still can't believe Kady set a new riding record."

"That's because you weren't paying attention," Eliot says, toeing off his shoes — _fuck_ , he needs to be horizontal. "And to think, you wished she was a man."

He flops to his back on the terrible bed, and Mike laughs and follows him down.

"My god," Mike says on a laugh, "is this really my life?"

Eliot hums. "A question I ask myself virtually every minute of every day."

He's pretty sure they don't mean the same things.

And he starts to say so, because that feeling in his chest is back again, and it's spreading, sloshing around with the whiskey and bitters. But Mike is rolling into his side and hovering above his head and slowly leaning down to kiss him, and it's nice and sweet and warm for a while, so whatever that feeling is will probably wait _._

Mike spreads a hand across his torso and catches his lip between his teeth, and if he can just ignore the twisting in his stomach and the tightness in his chest and the little voice in his head that's pointing out all of it, he could hold on to that nice sweet warmth, and he could just _feel_ …

Eliot's phone pings with a new text, then another, and it's just enough to make him pull back, breaking contact and blinking into Mike's blown-out blue eyes. Because what he feels is _wrong_ , somehow, off and uneasy. And fixing that feeling is the whole reason why he'd come here in the first place.

He sits up and scoots back, to give himself some room — both the physical space to breathe and the emotional space to explain.

"Here's the thing," he says, and sees surprise flash across Mike's cautious face. "I've done this, the… late-night last call hookup. First with the boys who barely knew my name, then with the ones who only wanted me because of it. I've done it. A lot."

Mike shakes his head, curling a hand around the back of his knee. "It doesn't matter to me how many people you've been with."

"Wow, okay," Eliot says, blanching a bit, "uh, wasn't really where I was going with that at all. Just to be clear, I stopped apologizing for who I am a long time ago."

"Noted," Mike says with a nod. "Then what's all this about, Eliot?"

Looking up at the ceiling and folding his hands in his lap, Eliot pulls in a big breath. Margo's moonstone is a smooth reminder on his skin. _Rebirth_.

"What I _haven't_ done?" he says, more question than answer. "Becoming me was kind of the greatest creative project of my life. But I've never been with anyone who knows me, not really. Not beyond whoever I am onscreen or whatever they think I can do for them. Whatever they're trying to forget. And if this is going to be… _anything_ , it can't start the same way."

He swallows hard and twists his fingers together, thinking of the reason he'd agreed to come here in the first place. Thinking fleetingly of Sebastian and firmly of Quentin, the world's bravest little toaster, who's so painfully honest about the things that he loves.

All at once, he understands Mayakovsky's snap judgment, the label he'd been given with nothing more than one look. Eliot has always thought he'd honed himself into something shiny and new, when all he'd really done was sculpt himself into the shape of something beautiful, a shining suit of armor, and shoved all the ugly shit inside.

And yeah, this is… _a lot_ , for a fourth date with someone he just met a week ago, someone who may have been looking for something hot and uncomplicated, not an unobstructed view at the contents of his psyche. But ultimately, he hadn't come here for a hookup. He hadn't even come here for _Mike_. He'd come here to heal something that has always been broken, no matter what space he's occupied or what world he's been in, and part of that process is confronting his own shit.

Slaying the monster he made inside his own skin, whom he's handed far too much power.

"I realize that I've put on a performance for just about everyone I've ever met, with some limited but wildly important exceptions, but… I don't actually want to live as a caricature, Mike, or feel like I have to act my way through every day. I thought I'd left that behind when I left Whiteland, and the truth is, all I did was switch to a different script."

Realization strikes like lightning, enough to make all his nerves spark with awareness.

There's nothing _missing_ in him. The irony of ironies is that his mother had been right all along, just in all the wrong ways. Eliot is _literally_ too much. He's Cain and the Monster, or Jekyll and Hyde — two separate lives crammed inside him and waging war, the same matter sharing the same space, and the only way to end it is to _let it go_.

He shrugs around a shaky breath. If this were a movie, it would be the cringeworthy moment in some empowering chick lit adaptation where the heroine firmly chooses herself.

"I've done it, for way too long," he says. "I'm _tired_. And I can't do it anymore."

Something clicks in his head and clears free of his chest the moment the words are out, and it leaves behind a _lightness_ , crisp and clear, that feels a lot like clarity.

Mike has been listening to it all, thoughtful and silent. But he nods, slowly, with both palms up flat, the way one might approach a cornered animal.

"It makes more sense, now. Why you'd want to come down here. I hear everything you're saying, okay? And I get that it hasn't been long, and this is new territory, and you don't want to fall into the same trap you just clawed your way out of. But Eliot, however nuts this might sound… I do know you. I do."

Eliot blinks, off balance again, and Mike reaches out to take his hand.

"Spending these last few days with you has already told me so much," he says. "It's not just that I know you're more than the part you play, Eliot. I know that you're sweet, and funny, and surprisingly genuine once you let that wall come down. I know you can't see the best things about yourself, but you seem to be the first person to see them in everyone else. I know you actually _listen_ when I talk, like there's nothing else you'd rather be hearin' and no place else in the world you'd rather be. And I know you pretend not to care about anything, when you really care so much you damn near glow with it, and it's sort of beautiful, watching you be such a bad actor for once."

Mike's eyes are soft and his hand is warm, but it's his words that punch all the air from Eliot's lungs, send his head reeling. That feeling of exposure comes back in full force, as if he's stripped down to the skin for the whole world to see, with all his invisible scars made flesh.

If it weren't for the sound of his phone pinging again, followed by the rapid pound of a fist on his door, he's pretty sure he might have passed out.

"I've been out here long enough to come up for fucking air," Margo yells through the door, "so if dicks are still out, I really do not give a shit."

Eliot scrambles off the bed, standing up into air he can actually breathe, and fumbles with the lock to let her in.

"Bambi, what…"

"Jesus Christ, El, I've been texting you for twenty goddamn minutes."

She plants herself in the middle of the floor, hands on her hips in all her afterglow glory, her lipstick gone and her skin flushed rose gold — she's had at least one good orgasm tonight, and probably wrung a few out of Belle the Bartender. Eliot raises an eyebrow.

"Did you want me to _refer_ to said texts, or…"

"The studio called," she snaps, but her anger is already cracking at each corner. "Not only do they want you for _Chimera_ , Mayakovsky's refusing to do it with anyone else."

He staggers back a step, sure he couldn't have heard her correctly.

"That's not…" He curls his fingers into his palm, hard enough to carve half-moons into his skin. "Are you serious?"

The look Margo gives him could level mountains. "I will fuck a lot of things, but you know I don't fuck around with a deal." She glances around, ever above it all, but her scowl is slowly stretching into a smile. "So get it together and get a goodbye bang in, because it's time to get back to your life. It's been real, being home on the range and all, but the suits need you front and center and signing shit on Monday morning, and it's gonna take at least a day to delouse you into something presentable."

Eliot expects her to spin and sweep out of the room, as is her custom, leaving a glorious trail of terror and triumph and Tom Ford's Fucking Fabulous in her wake. But she steps forward to sling her arms around his waist, where he can wrap himself around her, his tiny, immovable anchor, and breathe her in up close — the heady, familiar cloud of her, all spiced leather and sweet lavender and sharp, unconditional love.

She plants the point of her chin in his chest so she can catch his eyes.

"I'm proud of you," she says, her hands holding on tight. And he may be blindsided and dumbfounded and all the appropriate adjectives, but he will always have a kiss for his Bambi.

She does leave then, and for a moment Eliot floats in a fog of disbelief. For all he'd done to land this part, fought hard and hoped harder, deep down, he hadn't really thought it would happen. Hadn't thought it was actually possible.

"Holy shit," he says, just to hear it out loud, blowing out a breath made of bright, buoyant laughter. He takes his phone from his pocket and turns back to the bed… where Mike is still sitting, eyebrows up and lips folded together, giving him an awkward, half-aborted wave.

Which is probably a perfectly reasonable reaction, given that Eliot had almost forgotten he was here.

Had been, truth be told, well on his way to texting Q to relay the ridiculous news.

"I'm sorry," he sighs. "On multiple levels. But —"

Mike shakes his head. "Eliot, I get it. It's your dream job. You can't turn that down."

It _is_ the role of Eliot's dreams, and the opportunity of a lifetime, and everything he's worked so hard for. But there's also _this_ , this thing that he'd never seen coming, that he didn't know could be a reality before right now.

The things Mike had said… only two people in the world have ever bothered to know him that way, have ever _wanted_ to. Much as he adores her, Margo is as _platonic life partner_ as they come, and Quentin… well.

Quentin is _everything_ , but not a choice he has to make.

And, frankly, that may be fair — it's beyond selfish to assume the universe owes him some great love of his life when it's already given him a soulmate. Considering his track record with relationships and people and life in general, he has no fucking clue how it could possibly be this easy, but… he can actually _have_ this, real and refreshing and _so close_ to exactly what he wants, and he's not sure he can just walk away from the chance.

So he pulls in a deep breath and borrows Mike's own words from just a few days ago.

"Of course, you could always come with me."

For a moment, Mike doesn't answer at all.

Then he barks out a laugh and bounds off the bed and pulls Eliot into a grinning, giddy kiss.

Eliot leans into it, reasoning with the voice in his head — Hollywood may have the big moments and the grand gestures, the declarations of love set to a sweeping score and fading sweetly to black, but real people in real life don't get the be-all, end-all, epic movie love. Real people get nice, and safe, and comfortable, and if they're lucky, they get a few butterflies in the process.

Maybe what was feeling _wrong_ is just… uncertain, unexpected. _New_ , in a way that needs time and light and space to grow — something cocooned, waiting for transformation. But it's enough.

It can be enough.

Quentin had pretty much started packing the minute he'd read Margo's message. _He got it,_ it said, _and they need him in LA ASAP. Pack your shit and get your ass in the basket, Toto, we're flying the fuck out of Oz._

He's zipping up his bag when there's a knock at the door, and he swings it open to find El on the other side — shocking in a number of ways, since the last they'd seen each other, Quentin had been rushing past him in the lobby so he could make it into his room before he had to watch Mike waltz into Eliot's.

And maybe he's a masochist, because in lieu of _hello_ , he asks, "Where's Mike?" as if he actually wants to know.

His tone must not sell it, because he's treated to Eliot's wide, wincing smile, the one with none of his teeth, before he looks down at the floor.

"Does having conversations in the hallway do it for you, Quentin, or can I actually come in?"

He shuffles back as Eliot steps forward, and then they're locked in his room, together, with Eliot taking up all the air.

El raises an eyebrow in the direction of the bag on his bed. "Packed up already?"

Quentin shrugs. "I was pretty much living out of it to begin with. Somebody else had all my hangers." El huffs out a laugh and doesn't bother pointing out that he wouldn't actually have hung anything up anyway, and Quentin feels his heart constrict — so much of this will go away. "Um, hey, congrats. On Cain. I know how much you wanted it."

He's half hoping it will coax Eliot into sitting down and opening up, even without the wine and the puzzle and the familiar ground, just so he has at least this to hold onto. But El makes a face and slips his hands in his pockets, eyes flicking down to the floor and back up again.

"Q… are we okay?" he asks. "Because I know I asked you to come, that I wanted you here, but… it kind of feels like Brakebills broke us."

Fuck, this isn't what he'd meant. Quentin's used to Eliot being painfully sincere through a layer of funny and flippant, but this, raw and straightforward and completely unfiltered, this is just plain painful.

Sighing, he swipes a hand over his face. "We're not broken, El, I think we're just… _weird_ , right now."

Eliot nods, tongue trapped between his teeth. "Which means no."

" _No_ , it means… you're not the only one afraid of changing, Eliot." He has to stop to steady himself — his voice, his pulse, every swirling thought in his head. _'Cause I've built my life around you_. "But, you know, it's happening. Like, really rapidly. And I've been trying to… adjust, I guess? Or, I don't know. Brace myself." He presses his mouth flat and throws his hands wide, all the fight leaving him at once. "Pretty sure I mentioned this before, but I am not great with change."

"You keep saying that," El scoffs, but his tone isn't confrontational, it's _considerate_. "I don't think it's true at all, not the way you think it is."

There's no escaping the sound of his voice, but Quentin can look away from the thoughtful care in his face. He'd backed himself into this corner — anyone else would've been fed up with his whining, but this is Eliot, who can hear all the things he's not saying except the ones that have to do with Eliot himself. Of course, in this moment, he would do what he does so well — _completely_ shift gears, shift the spotlight from his own concerns to focus on whatever insight he has into the inner workings of Quentin Coldwater.

"Change is always hard in some way, whatever flavor it comes in. But… Q, the biggest changes in your life have always come from losing the people most important to you. James, Jane. Your dad. And that's not inherently about change at all. That's about _loss_. You can't beat yourself up because it's hard for you to lose people, Quentin. It's _supposed to be_."

Quentin clenches his jaw, irrationally grateful for the curtain of his hair.

"Forgive me if this is an act of monumental ego," El says softly, "but… if that's what really scares you, if that's what's been keeping you from finishing your script and moving on to bigger, better things than this… you don't have to brace yourself for anything. You're not gonna lose me, Q."

Something hot and sharp lances it way past Quentin's ribcage — the bullseye Eliot had missed earlier, finding its target again.

"Unless I'm wildly off base here, and you actually would rather wash your hands of me entirely —"

" _No_ ," he chokes, head snapping up to meet those amber eyes again. "El, that's. No."

Eliot nods. "Okay," he says, coming forward to slide his hands down Quentin's shoulders. The naked relief in his face is bright and beautiful, and his lower lip shakes beneath his wide smile, but it's clear the crutch of self-deprecating humor has come back to carry everything else. "Then the rest need not apply. Nothing has to change. Well, okay, _some things_ will change. But only in the best ways possible. You'll sell your script and land a deal and become the brilliant working writer you were always meant to be, and I'll stop feeling like I'm paying you to be my friend."

For a split second, Quentin is sure someone's ripped his heart out of his chest.

" _Eliot_."

"But _we_ won't change. Fundamentally. We can still…" Eliot bites his lip and shakes his head, drawing Quentin into a hug that huddles him against his chest and tucks him under his chin, with an arm wrapped around him and a hand in his hair.

Quentin closes his eyes, laces his fingers together around Eliot's waist, and lets himself sink into the contact.

"I'm not going anywhere, Q. Not unless you tell me to."

And nope, his heart is still present and very much accounted for, because it's beating so hard he can feel it in his teeth.

 _Now_. This is his moment.

"What if I want us to?"

It's muffled in the front of El's soft chambray shirt, but his fingers stop scratching along Quentin's scalp anyway. "To… what?"

"Change," Quentin says. "And, uh… other things?"

El brings his hands back to Quentin's shoulders, shifting him back far enough to get a full view of his face.

"Are you having a stroke?"

He looks amused and confused and just a little terrified, and _entirely_ like the Eliot he's always been, and laughter bubbles out of Quentin, hopeful and fond.

"Hey," he says, "um," before he figures _fuck it_ , grabs two fists full of the goddamn chambray shirt, and surges up to crush their mouths together.

It's tenuous for a second, up on his toes with Eliot frozen in place, long enough to make him reevaluate all his life choices. Then El's mouth opens against his and his hands are moving again, curling around the side of his neck, spreading across his back to anchor him in place while Quentin clings to him and tries like hell not to vibrate out of his skin, and everything is hot and golden and perfect, finally, fucking _finally_ …

Until Eliot gasps and tears himself away.

Quentin blinks his eyes open and sways forward to follow the heat of his mouth, fingertips tingling with the little burn of friction the fabric left behind. "Wha—" he starts, but the pain etched in El's face steals his breath mid-stream.

"So, fun fact," he says, holding up a finger. "I don't actually require my friends to fuck me."

Wrong-footed, Q laughs nervously. And, judging from the flinch, laughter of any kind was really not the right response.

"What are you… _What_?"

But Eliot shakes his head, and suddenly it's as though he's standing on set and getting ready to shoot — a big breath in, his face smoothing out, and then he's a blank fucking canvas. _Reset, back to one._

"I just _told you_ I wasn't going anywhere, Quentin, it's pretty much the theme of this entire conversation. And that's heavy and hard and emotional, so I get that maybe you're not thinking clearly. But I don't need… whatever this is. I need for you to believe me."

"I _do._ " Quentin steps forward, confusion setting in and panic next in line behind it. "I —"

Only Eliot drops his head like he can't quite stand to look at Quentin anymore, and it's impossible to get anything else out with his throat closed the way it is.

"I asked Mike to come back to LA."

"Oh," he says, thin, hollow, and folds his arms across his torso. "What, like… _someday_?"

Eliot sighs, the one that's part amusement and part exasperation and all exhaustion with the world. "No, Q, like _with me_. So _this_ …" He waves a hand — around the room in general, but kind of between them in particular — and shrugs, settling back into clear, calculated ease. "This isn't… we can just forget that this ever happened."

Quentin stares at him, blankly, for so long his eyes start to burn. He must have heard him wrong, what with all the ringing in his ears, but this can't actually be happening.

"You're bringing him home with you."

"I know, okay, it's moving at light speed. And it's more or less completely off brand. But… I don't know, I don't know what to tell you. It just feels like he gets me."

"He _gets_ you," Quentin echoes, the flat sound of his voice coming from far away.

" _Knows_ me," Eliot says. That, he hears crystal clear. "Like, no blinders, no bullshit, _knows me_."

"Right. Through your… tragic gay farmboy bond."

Eliot goes eerily still, the tip of his tongue peeking out from between his teeth. "I realize it's an occupational hazard, Quentin, but don't put words in my mouth. Yeah, maybe it's… a little bit crazy, but —"

"No, it's a lot, it's a lot fucking crazy," Quentin says, snorting and laughing and feeling a little crazy, himself. "How the hell could he _know you_ , Eliot? He met you like five fucking minutes ago, and you pretend to be other people for a living. _You_ don't even know you."

He only fully processes the words he's just said when El fades back a step, and then another, his face stricken and slack. He'd thought the thing in the diner was bad — Eliot's brittle apology, falling out of him in pieces by the end, with a tone full of trauma and the kind of haunted expression he's never had to direct at Quentin before — but this…

" _Shit_ , that's… El, that's not what I —"

"No, you're right."

Eliot's features flash through a dozen different emotions in the blink of an eye, before they settle on empty.

This is so much worse.

"We should probably spend some time getting to know each other better," he says, flat, oddly formal, "take the jet back by ourselves. So. Why don't you just grab yourselves a flight."

Dropping his arms and his shoulders and any pretense of dignity, Quentin reaches out a hand. "Eliot, come on."

But El is already in motion, swinging one shoulder wide to shift around Quentin so he won't have to touch him at all. "First class, on me. Bambi will shit enough bricks about flying commercial."

"I'm not talking about the fucking travel," Quentin says, on the edge of hysterical, managing to turn though the room is already spinning. "I'm asking you to _listen to me._ "

"It's late," Eliot answers, too quiet. His hand is on the door, and his eyes are on anything but Quentin, and it makes everything that aches that much worse — if _late_ is suddenly an issue, then the two of them are already changing in ways he never could have imagined. "I'll see you back in LA."

Quentin isn't not sure how long he stands there staring at the framed floor plan mounted on the oak, with faded instructions to follow on how to escape in case of emergency, but it's at least until his eyes burn.

Staring after Eliot, who had promised he wasn't going anywhere, just a few moments ago that only felt like a lifetime.

Apparently, that didn't apply to walking out the door.

There's a very slow but very steady drip in the bathroom faucet.

He hadn't noticed it the first night, after a day of travel and too much food and two conversations that left him wrung dry, and it certainly hadn't registered after the all-day tour of the ranch. But tonight, here he is, suddenly sober and still maddeningly awake at three a.m.

By the third time he turns over it's tempting to call Tick and ask him to take care of it, but the odds that the man could make the drip any better don't outweigh all the ways he could make everything else exponentially worse. Either way, Eliot has resigned himself to laying in the dark and listening to a leaky fixture.

He's strangely grateful for the distraction.

Maybe Quentin had gotten overwhelmed, as Quentins sometimes do, and all the _fearanxietyrelief_ their conversation conjured up had needed an outlet before he blew. Maybe he'd had a few too many at the bar and literally wasn't thinking straight. Hell, maybe the stroke joke wasn't that far off base.

But for all his brain can catastrophize, there's only one logical explanation. The fear had gotten the better of him, despite Eliot's every reassurance, and desperation had decided to play the only card up its sleeve: the Knave of Hearts in Eliot's image.

And yeah, he'd snarked at Bambi about Stockholm Syndrome, but _fuck_. How long has Q known, and just… carried on as if nothing was wrong? He'd let Eliot waltz into his house at all hours and waste time he could have spent writing and _wreck his goddamn relationship_. Let Eliot drag him down to Texas, even though everything that means anything to him is back home in LA — the warm little home he's built, which is the only place he feels truly comfortable, the book-stuffed office overlooking the mountains, where he has his best ideas, the oldest friend he has, who's finally home after a whirlwind of travel. And god, does Julia's easy empathy make more sense now — anyone else might have hated him for it, but she understands better than anyone how easy it is to love Quentin Coldwater.

And tonight, he'd let Eliot go on and on and fucking _on_ about how he wasn't going anywhere and nothing had to change between them, when there's only one _maybe_ that makes any sense — Quentin isn't afraid of losing him, he's afraid of losing _his job._ Even back at the diner, when he'd clearly wanted nothing more than to be wherever Eliot wasn't, he'd had to pause his hasty retreat to make sure that Eliot didn't _need anything_.

Mike had snapped him out of the daze Q had left in his wake — literally, snapped his fingers in front of Eliot's face — and shaken his head as he flagged down a waitress. _That's what happens when you let the lines get blurred_ , he'd said. _You tend to forget the real shape of things._

And he had, hadn't he? Quentin's been doing his job and then some, indulging Eliot's every ridiculous whim, and all this time, he'd thought… But in hindsight, Quentin has been trying to course correct for weeks, down to correcting Eliot's sad Batman reference.

When all is said and done, Quentin is Alfred, not Robin. Would rather be the butler than the partner.

There's a muffled sound out in the hall, and something crinkles over the carpet as it's shoved through the light-leaking gap beneath the door. It can only be Q — it's the middle of the night, Eliot hasn't had any soul-shredding encounters with anyone else of late, and an overthinking Quentin has all the chill of a Pomeranian on bad uppers. He just can't bring himself to roll out of bed and actually see what it is, not with his chest still cracked open. Knowing Q, it's either six pages of self-flagellating apology or six sentences of shame-filled resignation, in the extremely literal sense. And he can't take either. Not yet.

Turning over with a groan, he resolutely ignores the new elephant in the room and returns his attention to the steady sound of the drip.

Eliot hasn't cried as himself in years, not really. But damn if he doesn't come close.

When Quentin had walked into The Wellspring, he'd made it about five feet from the swinging doors before Fen had taken one look at him, widened her eyes, and half-filled a glass with the same Malbec he'd been drinking last night.

It had not been a great Malbec, even before he'd hurled most of it into the bushes. But it's eleven a.m., Eliot is gone, and Quentin will take what he can get.

He's still the only person in the place, slumped on a stool at the bar while Fen finishes her prep for the day ahead. At least she's a decent distraction. There's a steady stream of small talk, since the fangirl in her can't help but default to picking his brain about Fillory — and he has very strong feelings about the fact that they were able to adapt the series as one film per book, without dragging out the finale to milk the box office or inserting new characters and random nonsense that split one novel into a fucking trilogy, thank you very much — but it's effective enough at keeping his mind off other things.

Like the lingering fear that he's ruined things with Eliot forever.

"Hey, so," he says, a little too loud, squinting across the bar to the signage at the back, "is it a coincidence that this place is called The Wellspring?"

Fen snorts. "Oh my god, how awesome would that be?" she says brightly. "But no. I named it."

Quentin's wine hand stops halfway to his mouth. "You… named the bar you work in?"

"Oh yeah. But it was years ago. Like, _way_ before I worked here." Which makes even _less_ sense — Fen is firmly within his age bracket, and the sign out front must be at least a decade old.

His confusion must show on his face, because she starts a sheepish explanation without prompting. "My dad is mostly the local blacksmith, but he also… owns most of the businesses in town? I was like eight when he bought the bar from old man Everett, and then when it came time to rebrand I asked if I could name it, and being the awesome dad that he is, he actually let me."

She wipes circles across the bar top with a towel, looking like she's anticipating his judgement. "I know this sounds cheesy, but… everything in this town is so tethered to it. I guess eight-year-old me just liked the idea of _one thing_ feeling bigger than Brakebills."

Quentin manages the ghost of a smile, which is a big step, considering.

"Like the source of all magic?"

Her face breaks into a beam of sunshine. " _Exactly_." She nods, almost a fond afterthought. "Then it sort of became a thing, and I ended up with my own piece of Fillory right here in Brakebills."

The details are making so much more sense now, things like the name of the diner, and the theater's private screenings, and the little bookshop she'd pointed out on their walk with an awning that read _The Armory_.

Jesus, that had only been yesterday.

"Did you take any of it with you?" she asks. "Like a souvenir. Something to remember your Fillory by?"

Quentin spins his wine glass between his palms, as if it will magically make the Malbec any better. "Uh, yeah," he says. "I took the Cozy Horse, actually. Well, the model they used for practical photography. I wasn't supposed to — we went back to the lot the day after we wrapped, me and Julia and, and James, and smuggled it out in the back of a crew truck. For a long time I thought we'd pulled off this elaborate heist and nobody knew where the hell it went, but… really, James paid the prop house for it. Called it a parting gift from my fictional big brother."

For a second, he can hear Jules' uncontrollable laughter as they bounced around in the flatbed, holding on to the thing for dear life. Quentin's still not sure whether James bought it after the fact, or if it was already a done deal when they stole it, and he'd just wanted to give them some last crazy adventure.

Either way, it'd been the last thing they'd ever really done together.

He finishes his wine with one big swallow, and Fen refills his glass without asking. "So yeah," he says, trying a smile again, "there's a horse taking up like half the space in my spare bedroom."

He doesn't tell her that the horse is currently wearing Martin Chatwin's circlet crown, crafted from onyx and obsidian and points of rich ruby quartz, the only other thing he'd held onto. That the first time Eliot had ever laid eyes on it his whole face had lit up with delight — or maybe half a bottle of wine — and Quentin had taken it out of his hands just before he could try it on. Made him kneel, and crowned him, completely in jest and utterly not at all.

 _High King Eliot, the Spectacular_.

Who, it seems, has chosen a prince.

He takes a too-large swig of his wine, trying not to wallow. Sure, he now knows for sure that El doesn't feel the same way. Quentin hadn't thought he would, not really — it had been a little spark of hope, big and bright in his heart, and at least it hadn't been snuffed out entirely. He may have a healthy case of morning after panic at the moment, but when all is said and done, they'll be okay, the two of them. Eliot may not want him, but he still wants him _around_. Still wants to hold onto this bond they've built, and for them to remain firmly _them_. He'd said so, and he would hold to that, even after Quentin's careless words, and how much they had clearly wounded — for all he'd claim otherwise, when he cares about someone, Eliot is gracious in a way that's almost boundless. Even if, like Sebastian, it only burned him in the end.

And if there's a positive in all of this, it's that El knows everything now. It had even happened in a way that didn't involve a press release and a production crew — Quentin had ripped off the rest of the bandaid when he'd shoved that envelope under Eliot's door at three this morning. And if the universe has any pity at all, El won't read it on the plane and feel sorry for him in Mike's presence.

You know, _if they're going to get along going forward_.

Suddenly the borderline Malbec is way too bitter.

"Um, out of curiosity," he says, "how well do you know Mike?"

Fen screws up her face, then shrugs. "Pretty well, I guess? He's a couple years older, but our dads were longtime Lodge buddies, so we sort of grew up together." She turns to the wall behind the bar and starts stacking glasses. "I mean, I'm happy for him. He'll have so many more opportunities in LA, you know? He always hated it here."

Quentin chokes on what's left of his wine, cold climbing up his spine. "Wait," he sputters, " _what_?"

He listens to her rambling, roundabout explanation, stomach twisting with every syllable.

At least he could actually throw up in the bathroom this time.

He's frantically trying to call Eliot before she's fully finished. He isn't sure what time they'd left, presumably in Mike's pickup, and it's more than likely they've already made it to San Angelo, but maybe he can manage to catch El while they're still on the tarmac.

"Why," Fen says cautiously, finally catching on just as El's phone kicks him to voicemail, "is there something wrong?"

 _I know you're not ready to talk to me_ , he texts, _but I need you to answer your fucking phone_.

"Quentin —"

" _Fuck_." Voicemail again.

_This might sound like jealousy, or maybe just me being super desperate, but I promise that it isn't. There's something you need to know about Mike._

"Okay, uh… _._ " Fen laughs a little, understandably uncomfortable, but he can't focus on her right now, not with texting and redialing and irrationally trying to reach out to El telepathically. "I _really_ don't know what just happened. Quentin?"

"Goddammit, Eliot." He puts the phone to his ear and his head on the bar, listening to the call ring out. " _Pick up_."

"Quentin, for fuck's sake."

That one definitely hadn't come from Fen.

He pivots his forehead on the bar top until he can see Margo's frustrated face. Her lips are moving, but all he can hear is Eliot's outgoing greeting — _I'm probably not going to listen to your message. But if you'd still like to leave one for posterity's sake, please, go right ahead._

Sitting up straight and cutting the call, he sends one last single word text.

"We have a two-hour drive to the world's jankiest airport, and you disappeared to _day drink_ ," Margo says. "Are you even packed?"

He slides sideways off the stool and somehow lands on his feet. "I'm, no, I already — you know what, it doesn't matter. Have you talked to Eliot?"

She tosses her head and crosses her arms. "If a six a.m. stream of capslock counts," she says, "sure."

" _Yeah_ , I was there for that," Fen stage whispers. "Don't think it does."

"You need to call him."

"What I _need_ is a full body massage and a set of sheets with a thread count higher than _sandpaper_ ," Margo scoffs. "Isn't that a phone in your hand?"

"I tried, okay, he won't…" Quentin shakes his head. "He'll answer if it's you. But you have to tell him, Mike is… he isn't —"

"Look, I get it," she cuts in. "But if Eliot's whole identity crisis wants to play house with random cock —"

He holds his phone out in front of her, so she can read the last text he'd sent.

_Credenza._

Her eyes sharpen at the sight, but when he drops his hand again, something in her face feels impossibly soft.

"Oh, Q," she says on a breath, "what did you do?"

It's shocked and surprisingly sympathetic and something Quentin really hopes is rhetorical, since he couldn't possibly answer her with his heart lodged in his throat.

"El's not gonna answer, baby, not even for me. He took off at least an hour ago." She takes a step forward, takes his chin in her hand. "But whatever it is, we'll fix it. Okay?"

Her features all begin to blur, but he believes her.

It's Margo. She can do anything.

She slides between him and the edge of the bar with a groan, and Quentin scrubs at his eyes and turns to take in the curious look on Fen's face. "It's really cute that you call him baby."

Margo snorts. "It's not because he's cute," she says, "it's 'cause he's helpless and can't clean up his own shit." She hooks a finger inside the collar of Fen's shirt, draws her down over the bar, kisses her slow and deep until she looks dazed and breathless. Margo hums at the end, releasing her lower lip with a sly smile. "You're sweet. All over, which is even better. Look me up if you ever flee for civilization."

For a second there's a spark of something bright in his chest — he's seen a million Margo destination hookups, but he's never seen her say goodbye before.

She turns, game face back on, and starts to herd him toward the door, before Fen comes out from behind the bar and calls out for him to wait. It's almost identical to the way they'd met, somehow still bafflingly _just yesterday_ , and he suddenly feels a rush of affection for her.

"This might just be me being dumb, but…" she starts, then stumbles forward to tackle him in a tight hug. "I'm so glad I got to show you my Fillory."

The contact is warming some of the cold under his skin, and he smiles and squeezes her back.

"It isn't just you," he says, "remember?"

Heading home in the over-the-top opulence of Henry's private plane isn't exactly the heart-to-heart time Eliot had in mind — he and Mike have been sitting in near silence for almost an hour.

Which is fine. They've done enough talking over the last few days to last for more than a few flights.

"Everything okay?" Mike asks, apropos of nothing, one eyebrow near his hairline.

Eliot sips his champagne and presses his lips into a thin smile. "Everything's great."

"Great." Mike nods, then takes a deep breath and drops his mouth open. "It's just, Quentin texted a while ago now, more than once, it seems like. And you haven't bothered to look."

Humming, Eliot looks out the window and takes another sip, his phone still face down on the table between them.

"Funny thing is, I ran into him last night. Quentin." Eliot's eyes snap back, and Mike nods again, running his hands over his thighs. "Yeah, in the bathroom back at the bar. He seemed a little out of sorts. On edge, even."

"Not sure if you've noticed," Eliot says, "but Quentin can be kind of a pill."

Mike lifts his fingers from his legs until Eliot can see the flat of both palms. "Just trying to make sure nothing's wrong, that's all."

Eliot almost laughs, but it takes every shred of energy not to loop back to that blindsiding, breathtaking kiss, and the acidic conversation after. Of the thick manila envelope slipped under his door, with his name scrawled across the front in Sharpie and Q's scratchy caps.

He hasn't been able to make himself open that yet, either, so the unread texts aren't alone there.

"Nothing a long nap and another drink won't fix," he says. "Obviously, not in that order."

He waves Wendy over for a refill and has her leave the bottle behind. Given the time, this should probably contain some sort of juice, but honestly, given his current mental state, it's a miracle he hadn't skipped straight to the vodka.

Denial always has been his favorite mixer.

"Do you ever think that maybe," Mike starts, shifting in his seat, "and tell me if I'm overstepping here, but Quentin seems pretty… attached. Or, _invested_ might be a better word, I guess. And I keep trying to figure out whether he's really that devoted to his job, or if he's just, you know… living vicariously. I mean, you're talented and successful and one of the biggest stars on the planet right now, and Quentin's kind of the guy who did this one big franchise as a kid and never made it as an actor after that."

 _You're overstepping_ , Eliot almost says, thinking back to the diner and that throwaway comment about Kady and wondering just how often Mike's mouth gets away from him.

As if _talent_ had anything to do with it.

He thinks of the first time he'd watched _The World in the Walls_ , armed with half a bottle of Patrón and the delusional pride that he'd managed to make it ten days into knowing Quentin Coldwater before curiosity had gotten the best of him. And fuck, what a watch it was. Eliot at fourteen had been overheating in layers of secondhand castoffs as a swing in his high school production of _Our Town_. Quentin at fourteen had been in wide release for all the world to see, and the lost little adventurer he'd made of Martin Chatwin, restless and curious and desperate to belong, had been nothing short of magic.

"Interesting theory," he answers, though his hackles are still all the way up, "but no. Q doesn't want to act, he never did." That late-night revelation comes back to him then, the thing he's only thought in the dark, and he sets his glass aside and looks down at this lap.

"Quentin's a screenwriter. A fucking phenomenal one, to be perfectly honest. The only reason he puts up with me at all is to pay his dues and work his way up the food chain, just like everybody else."

The sound of Mike's incredulous breath of a laugh makes him look up again.

"Quentin just had a script hit the Black List," Mike scoffs. "Why would he ever need to stay your PA if writing was what he really wanted to do?"

Eliot blinks. "Bullshit," he says — why is a _farmer_ from fucking _Texas_ keeping tabs on the fucking Black List, anyway? — but picks up his phone, pointedly ignores the little red number on his text notifications, and thanks the tech gods for in-flight wifi while he looks up the latest roundup.

And there it is, in fourth place for the year — _A Life in the Day_ , a high-concept fantasy about two men trapped together in an alternate reality, where the only way to return to the world they knew is to solve an unsolvable puzzle. And Eliot will examine _that_ particular mindfuck in a moment, because surely he's reading into things there, but…

Holy shit, this is _real_.

That's Quentin's name right there in black and white. Zelda's there too, listed just underneath as his rep, and the name of his management company, and a link to a related article, from three fucking days ago, about Lionsgate _optioning the production_. He taps through to read, and that one is just a blurb, details on the deal and a slightly longer synopsis, but it knocks him metaphorically flat — not just because Quentin has apparently finished a script Eliot didn't even know he had started, not because he's actually _sold_ it, for a figure that contains a not insignificant number of zeroes, not even because it sounds plausibly _based on them_ , but because it basically ends with a pull quote from the man himself.

 _I actually wouldn't label it fantasy, per se_ , it says. _It's an inherently magical story, yes, so there are fantasy elements there. But ultimately, it's just about two people, and the things they build together. If you take all the fantasy away, there's still something sort of beautiful in that._

Between the burst of pride in his chest and the blurring sting behind his eyes, something in the phrasing sparks in Eliot's brain. _Déjà vu._

Across from him, Mike shifts. And _there_ it is, the point of origin.

"Something sort of beautiful," he breathes, eyes coming up. Mike stutters out a laugh, looking caught out already.

"What?"

"That's what you said, right? In the big 'I know you' speech. That it was _sort of beautiful,_ to watch me be such a bad actor for once." Mike opens his mouth, and Eliot shakes his head. "Oh, don't. I can hold on to a great line for _ages_ , okay, Daddy didn't give up coke for nothing."

God, even replaying it in his head now and accounting for the Texas twist, he can _hear_ the Q in it all, feel his presence like a fingerprint — all the shit he's been telling Eliot for years, in bits and pieces, whenever he's needed to hear them, strung together in one big rambling Quentin Coldwater Monologue. Or maybe, in this case, in stalwart defense of Eliot's honor.

He can't imagine what the hell had happened in that bathroom.

"What the fuck would possess you to — just, _Jesus…_ tell me why."

And Mike may be an opportunistic asshole, but he certainly isn't a dumb one. He leans forward, wide-eyed and earnest, and puts his hands and his cards on the table.

"I always wanted to be an actor. Not in some local glorified drama club, a _real_ actor. But it wasn't just that, it was… I wanted something that could get me out of Brakebills, you know? Out of the trap of being a farmer in a family of farmers, with my whole life already decided. Winning that contest felt like lookin' in a window to the life that I missed, but when we clicked… Eliot, that felt like a _chance_. And it was one I had to take."

Eliot swallows, because all this being fake is a bitter fucking pill, but he can't say he wouldn't have done the same. "You could've just been honest with me."

"I'm sorry," Mike says, spreading his hands. "I wasn't sure you'd understand."

And Eliot has to laugh at that, genuinely laugh, because life is so fucked up this way. It just goes to show that this queer boy with big dreams who's spent his whole life trapped on some farm in some small town under the weight of his small-minded family's expectations… he doesn't know Eliot at all.

"It's fine," he says, but holds a hand up when Mike blows out a breath and leans in across the little table between them. "Yeah, not that fine. Shooting your shot, I could handle. Respect you for, even. But…"

He has to stop, has to take a big breath, because _fuck_ , the rest of that sentence can only be _Quentin_. His whole life for the last three years and change has been one long, winding string of _but Quentin_ , from the moment he'd first stumbled into Eliot's orbit and sent him careening wildly off course.

Eliot thinks of the spell he's been under since last night, and of a conversation countless nights before, when he'd watched Quentin struggle for some synonym he couldn't quite grasp and asked why finding the perfect word was so important. _Because… words are our most inexhaustible source of magic,_ Q had answered. Eliot had grinned, as amused and utterly charmed as always. _Did you actually quote dead Dumbledore at me?_ he'd said, and watched Quentin's whole face shine with surprise. _Did you actually understand that reference?_

Even with this last desperate detour and this accidental proxy, even spoken in another voice and wearing someone else's face, he is forever falling for Quentin Coldwater.

"The thing is," he finishes, "you took his _words_ , Mike. And if you knew how much words mean to him, you'd get why this ends here."

Quentin holds his breath while Margo pinches the bridge of her nose between two manicured fingers and shakes her head with a sigh.

"Deep dicking Christ, Quentin, you two dumbasses will be the death of me."

He isn't surprised by her disgust. He's not even that surprised she'd had the patience to let him get it all out without adding similar commentary the whole way through.

He _is_ a little shocked that she's actually sitting here beside him in the backseat. But he'd climbed into the car and slumped in a heap against the door, and she'd shaken her head and climbed in after him, then sat back and stayed silent while he'd spilled out the whole sordid tale from start to finish.

Well, both _start_ and _whole_ are relative — going back to the beginning would have taken too long, and she really doesn't need to know the things he's done in his dreams.

He burrows further into the leather and lets his head fall back to the window — serves him right that, on top of everything else, now he has to fly wine drunk and maudlin.

"Um, okay," he says, "but what are we gonna do?"

Margo snorts. "I'm tempted to lock you in a room together until you can talk like grown ass adults." She tilts her head. "Or until you starve to death, whichever comes first."

Quentin scowls. "I meant about _Mike_."

"Fuck _Mike_ ," she spits. "I'm kneecapping that motherfucker on sight." She reaches out to lay a hand on his arm, gentle but firm. "El's had him spinning shit in his ear for days now, Quentin, he can handle himself for a few more hours. It's _you_ and Eliot we need to fix. You get that, right?"

He squirms in his seat, all too aware of Penny and Kady up front, just a few feet away. Though it's probably too late now — if they hadn't overheard his sadness and wine-fueled recap, they've probably heard enough from Julia already. She's always been loose-lipped and preachy in the name of his best interests, and he's not sure her pillow talk is any different.

"We'll be okay," he mumbles.

And they would. Once he's apologized again, maybe groveled a little, and they've gotten back to their old routine. Once El has read the script, and all the secrets are out, and they get past the first awkward flush of one-sided feelings revealed. Once Mike went back where he came from, and they fielded the fallout, and he and El opened a bottle of wine and talked through the things that brought them to Brakebills in the first place.

Or maybe just, as Eliot said, once they forgot all this ever happened.

But Margo just rolls her eyes.

"I don't want you assholes to be _okay_. I want you to be fucking _happy._ "

He pulls in a shaky breath, suddenly and overwhelmingly grateful that she's here. That this walking cyclone of woman who is everything to and for Eliot has made some small space for him, even if it's in the backseat.

She squeezes his arm, then brushes the hair back from his face, with a smile that's small and sad and impossibly certain.

"It's okay for you to want that, too."

For two people who only met a handful of days ago, made out a few times, and wildly overshared their mutual farm town trauma before one of them was outed for some morally questionable opportunism, parting ways is surprisingly amicable.

They'd been greeted at the jetway and handed off their luggage and climbed into a BMW escort across the airfield, and now they're sitting in one the private terminal's many lounges, nursing craft cocktails and waiting for their respective rides. Eliot had offered to send Mike back to Brakebills first class, but he'd politely declined, opting to try his luck in LA for a while. He couldn't exactly call a Lyft for a pickup from the P/S, so Eliot had hired a car to take him out to an old friend's place in the Valley.

An agent comes to alert them when the black car arrives, rolling Mike's bag behind him.

Eliot stands to see him off, suddenly stiff and unsure, and Mike flashes that southern sunshine smile.

"Thanks for… all this," he says, and bites into his lip. "Not sure how much it's worth, but I really am sorry. I guess I hoped it was just him."

"Okay." Eliot narrows his eyes. "What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

Mike tilts his head. "Come on, Eliot. What he said, those words I borrowed… that's above and beyond being a loyal employee." He shrugs. "I'm just sayin', if you decide to step out on that limb, I doubt you'd be out there alone."

Eliot sends him off with Bigby's number — she's a hell of an agent, if a little eccentric, and she's always worked wonders with boys from the South — and a little negotiation about a horse. _Send her up with Fen_ , he'd suggested, _and_ _Margo may just let you live._

Which leaves him in much more familiar territory — back in silk and slacks and a trinity knot at his neck, standing outside the terminal to smoke and wait for fucking Todd.

It's both comforting and anticlimactic.

He's been outside for all of five minutes when his phone rings in his pocket. And he hadn't exactly discussed the revised plan of departure with Margo, so much as sent her a series of short texts at six a.m. — _Taking the jet back with Mike_ and _Quentin's booking for you and the crew_ and _Please spare my extremities, I'll explain later, I promise_ — so this call should be an absolute blast.

"Bambi," he says in lieu of _hello_ , "before we begin, I should let you know that this call is being recorded and will be forwarded to the proper authorities in the event of my untimely demise."

She snorts into the phone, and the sound is strangely heartwarming. "Bitch, please. Even if you actually _would_ turn my ass in, you know they would never find your body."

Eliot hums. "Point."

"So what exactly is my motive here, Eliot? The fact that you threw me to the unwashed masses to fly back in style with the dime store cowboy? Or that I am now on a _layover_ for the next hour and a half without even having left fucking Texas? You know what business class on an in-state flight to Dallas is, El? It is a _curtain_ and a barely-chilled bottle of Dasani."

He flattens his lips together, hard — this will get _so much worse_ for him if he laughs.

"He's full of shit," she says firmly.

Sighing out smoke, he ashes his cigarette into the wind. "That has recently come to my attention, yes. If it counts for anything, he's gone."

"Then he's one less body to worry about. But you never answered my question. Is there anything else you can think of off the top of your head that might make me murderous?"

"On any given day?" he says, wincing when she doesn't react at all. "Is Quentin with you?"

" _Quentin_ is curled up in a corner somewhere, probably pulling out all his hair by now. I had to put Penny on follicle watch." There's a muffled rush of air on her end, the sound of her taking a deep breath. "I don't get why you think you don't deserve shit, El, but you could have _so fucking much_ if you would just…"

"Get out of my own head?"

"No, asshole," she answers, "get out of your own goddamn _way_."

God, it sounds so simple coming from her.

Eliot is well aware that he's his own worst enemy. It's part of what drew him to Cain in the first place. And ultimately, it's what had drawn him to Brakebills — the thought that maybe, if he had a safe place to relive the worst things he can recall and dig up all the memories he'd buried in the deepest darkest places in his head, he could put himself back together, make himself whole with their pieces.

But those parts of him haven't broken so much as they've eroded, worn thin by time and tide, until their shape was something altogether new. And maybe that's what's meant to happen, the natural evolution of things — you start with raw material, the world chips away at it with pressure and pain, and you can either be dust in the wind or the diamond in the rough.

In his periphery, he can see his Audi roll up to the entrance. "My ride's here," he mutters, watching Todd tuck his bag in the trunk and toss his duffel into the back where he can reach it. "Call me when you land, okay?"

"When I land at LAX, you mean. In the public terminal. With the public."

He does laugh a little, then, and adores her so much it aches. "I'll have a car waiting for you."

"I guess that's a start. But as soon as we ink this deal, we're talking replacement vacay. Someplace with sand, and shopping, and a population that doesn't skin cows for a living."

"Sounds like a plan." He ducks into the darkness of the backseat and breaks its silence with words too rarely said. "I love you, Margo."

"I know," she says, a lilt of sweetness under everything that's absolutely sure. "There, was that so hard?"

She's gone by the time Todd slips into the driver's seat. "Sorry, about the… sorry. There's a massive pileup on the 405."

"Isn't there always?" Eliot mutters, sinking into the back of his seat. "At least we'll be on the other side of it going back."

"Actually…" Glancing over his shoulder, Todd smiles sheepishly, and Eliot knows before he even finishes the sentence. "I got caught up in the gaper's block, the wreck is on the outbound side. It's gonna be… a while."

And isn't that just fantastic?

He closes his eyes and contemplates sleep — he hadn't actually gotten a chance to take that nap, not after the big Mike reveal — but Bambi's words come back to him, the uncharacteristic plea in her voice. Cursing the part of his brain where she lives as his subconscious, he takes a deep breath, reaches into his duffel, and pulls out the mysterious manila envelope.

It takes no effort at all to break the seal, but every shred of Quentin-shaped bravery in him to pull out its contents. There's a script inside — Q's spec, all printed and bound, his name on the lower right corner of the cover in crisp 12-point Courier — with a Texas-shaped sticky note tacked to the center of the title page.

_Just read it,_ it says. _Maybe you can believe me, too._

With a hand that shakes more than he wants to examine, Eliot flips to the first scene and starts to read.

He's spent the last four years with color-coded shooting scripts, marked-up roadmaps of angles and movement and effects. Compared to that, this is practically prose — Quentin's viscerally lovely language, building a world out of words. And it isn't explicitly them, these two unnamed men — a hell of a risk, as narratives go, and _holy fuck_ , does it work — but it _sounds like_ them. Like precisely the conversations and arguments and aborted declarations they would exchange if they were trapped in another place and time, with nothing in the world but a cottage and a puzzle and each other to build a life with.

He imagines Quentin reading all the dialogue out loud, as he always did, pitching it to imitate Eliot's voice and cadence and affectation, and works his throat raw trying to beat the tears back.

Soon he's turning page after page, trying to process what's happening without flying out of his skin — which should be tough in stop-and-go traffic while _trapped in a car with Todd_ — but he couldn't stop if his life depended on it.

Then he reaches the start of a scene about a third of the way through that nearly stops his heart.

EXT. PUZZLE COTTAGE CLEARING – NIGHT

Our heroes sit at the center of a half-completed pattern, done trying for the day. They've lit all the torches surrounding the puzzle, stray tiles stacked haphazardly around the edges, and they stretch out on the patchwork quilt, barefoot and tired, unwinding with a bottle of wine.

Tonight is a special occasion.

  
  
---  
|  THE MAGICIAN  
(raising his glass)  
To our first and last year at this thing.  
  
THE FOOL  
You realize that we're toasting to our own insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?  
  
THE MAGICIAN  
(forcibly clinking)  
And a happy anniversary to you.  
(then)  
You're on a noble quest. Did you really think it would be easy?  
  
THE FOOL  
No, but... I didn't think it would be so random. This was supposed to mean something. I was supposed to matter here. |   
  
The Magician looks over to catch The Fool's eyes. His shrug is almost painfully transparent.  
  
|  THE MAGICIAN  
You matter to me.  
|   
  
The Fool looks at him in the golden glow of the torchlight, frozen down to the air in his lungs. This means everything. This is all that matters.

With his next breath, he leans in to kiss him.  
  
  


Eliot takes a moment to let it sink in, the joy and fear and disbelief, then makes himself keep reading. And there are _fifty years'_ worth of scenes just like it, with a home and a family and a _life_ , good and full and fucking _beautiful_ , and it's almost more than he can take. But it's not quite more than he can believe, even with the little voice in his head telling him it's just not possible — the one he'd listened to last night, unrelenting and ever-present, louder than the chorus-of-angels rush of _finally_ he'd felt the second Quentin had kissed him.

 _He doesn't want this,_ that voice had said. _He just knows how much you do._ And it had blended with Bambi's _you think he'd say no to anything you ever wanted?_ and Quentin's _I'm not great with change_ and his own _some days I'm not even sure he likes me_ , until the din drowned out everything and he'd dragged himself away.

A thought flashes through his fevered brain, and he picks up his phone and fires off a text, though, _fuck_ , it's almost midnight in London.

He stares at the message until the words hardly make sense— _When you got your impossible_ , it says, _were you ever afraid to take it?_ And he's just about to tuck his phone away again when a reply pops into the window.

 _I was terrified_ , it reads, and hangs there, waiting to be prompted. Eliot shakes his head at himself and this chain and the absurdity of the whole situation — who texts their ex for relationship advice in the middle of the night?

Then he pictures Sebastian, half a world away and squinting at his phone, lying in bed beside the love of his life.

 _How the hell did you get over it?_ he taps out, and the response comes while he's holding his breath.

_I didn't. I doubt I ever will. But I realized that taking the chance was less terrifying than the thought of losing it altogether._

He's still trying to decide what to say to that when the next one comes in.

 _Do tell Quentin hello_ , it says, _and that poor Oscar is none the worse for wear. Take care, Eliot._

His heart is pounding between his ears, but that voice is quiet now, with this script in his hands — proof of what Quentin might really want, might actually _feel_ , in his own words. One hundred and twenty pages of brad-bound black and white.

Words. Quentin's love language.

Eliot has spent so much time casually wondering what life would be like as a movie. But Q has written them into one, the two of them together, and _it's a goddamn love story_.

And he'd called _Eliot_ extra.

Never one to be outdone, he Googles in increasingly desperate search strings until he tracks down what he needs, the key to his grand gesture, and just seeing it on a six inch screen and imagining what it could mean brings back the sharp stab of fear.

"Home sweet home," Todd chirps cheerfully, ripping him out of his own head. "That wasn't too bad. I mean, it wasn't great, and I really have to pee, but it probably could've been worse. Especially with the pee."

Eliot rolls down the tinted window to take in the sight of the house he hates — not sweet, and definitely not _home_ — and looks back to the little picture of the future on his phone. Thinks of the big dreams that made him leave Whiteland behind, and the dream role he's just landed, and the impossible dream he's had since the day he met Quentin Coldwater, that's now somehow within reach.

"Take a pit stop, Todd," he says, digging his keys out of his duffel. "We've got someplace else to be."

Quentin unlocks his front door and drags himself into the house, Julia's voice husking out from the phone tucked to his ear — she's been trying to talk him off the ledge since he left LAX.

"I'm only asking you to really think about what made you kiss him in the first place. That urge didn't just come out of nowhere."

"No," he says, dropping his messenger bag on the sofa and shoving his roller down the hall, "it came from being in his general vicinity. The urge isn't new, Jules, it's the actual kissing part that's the problem."

"Is it, though?"

He flops down next to his bag with a groan. "I mean, he said we should forget it ever happened, then immediately left the state with someone else, so… probably?"

"That's because he's as big an idiot as you are." She sighs, Julia's patented mix of frustrated and determined. "I'm just saying… I've been trying to get you to come clean for weeks now, but something in your brain picked that moment for a _reason._ "

He replays it in his head — the swooping feeling in his stomach and the soaring in his heart, the solidness of Eliot all around him — and swallows.

"Yeah, well," he mumbles, "my brain is sort of an unreliable narrator."

"Fine, then what about what Margo —"

" _Julia_ ," he cuts in, curling his free hand into a fist. "Look, I know you're only trying to help, but… it's not, okay? This isn't some movie where everything resolves itself by the end of act three and everyone lives happily ever after. Things are _completely_ fucked right now. Because I fucked them up. And I just want to be unconscious for the rest of the night, and maybe start trying to _unfuck_ it all tomorrow, so El and I can get back to normal and get on with our goddamn lives."

Between selling the script and saying the words, he feels like he's letting go of a long-held possibility, one that had burned so bright for so long that following its light was sometimes all that had kept him going.

Now that part of him has to start from scratch, find something else to keep him out of the dark.

She's silent for a moment, and he can feel its weight through the phone.

"Q…" she finally says, "that is _exactly_ the movie you wrote. There is no normal anymore, not the way you knew it."

Which is what he'd been afraid of all along.

"I gotta go, Jules."

She sniffs. "I'm here if you need me. But call me in the morning. I mean it, Q."

He makes a sound he hopes sounds something like agreement, then disconnects, drops his phone on the seat beside him, and covers his face with his hands. The urge to scream into his skin is overwhelming, and somehow the fact that no one is there to hear him is the only thing that keeps him doing it.

He leans forward, his hands falling away, and takes in the space around him. The air is thicker than it usually is, the house stuffy and stale from the past few days of being closed up and unused. It's still early enough that there's light spilling into the room behind the sheers, casting shadows across the floor with the mullions in the windows so the tile is divided into stretched-out squares, and the sight of it reminds him of a puzzle that only exists in his head, one he'd made the catalyst of a story that spans fifty years, and will only ever exist in fiction.

Its inspiration is sitting a scant foot away, beside an unopened bottle of wine, its final form still just a few small pieces from finished.

He's not sure whether Eliot will ever touch it again.

Quentin leans over, elbows across his knees, and reaches out a finger to put the first loose piece in its place. Then he does it again, and again, until there's one lonely little piece left, half grass green and half bright blue, the shades bisected right down the middle.

He stares at it, eyes fixed and unfocused, until the colors blur together. But no matter how hard he tries, he just can't make himself pick up that piece.

So he picks up his phone, instead.

The frantic messages he'd sent from The Wellspring are still there, blaring blue and unanswered, the last-ditch effort of a single coded word reading like an exclamation point on his desperation. But there's been Margo since, and Julia, and two legs of a long trip back to LA — the sharp edge of his panic is gone, after all that, and according to Margo, so is Mike.

Now it's just him, and Eliot, and an unfinished puzzle. And _that_ , he knows that like the back of his hand, so there's no better place for them to start over.

Quentin takes a deep breath and taps out a different word this time.

_Hey._

It sits there for a moment, in all its open-ended hope, before it's clear that there won't be a response to this one, either. So he shifts position, tucking his legs under him and leaning into the arm of the sofa, and settles in to try his first Quentin Coldwater Monologue via text.

 _If you had a chance to read what I left you, then you probably have some questions. Like how the hell I wrote an entire script without saying anything about it at all._ He frowns down at his phone, contemplating the message he'd just sent. _Actually, if the answer to that question isn't obvious after reading, then I'm not sure the script is doing what I think it does._

That one, he wants back as soon as he hits send. It might be too early for easy humor, even with Eliot.

 _Or maybe you don't,_ he frantically types. _Maybe we just let it stand on its own, and be what it is, and we really do forget the rest ever happened._ He hits send again but doesn't stop typing. _Either way, you know where to find me. Whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, I'm not going anywhere, either._

He gives it a second.

Still nothing.

_Brakebills didn't break us, El. I did. And I just want a chance to fix it._

His eyes are burning and his stomach is in knots, that desperation setting in again.

Last-ditch can't be code this time.

 _But however long that takes_ , he sends, _you are still the most beautiful part of my life. I hope you know that._

When the animated ellipsis pops up, he's never seen more welcome punctuation.

The little dots dance on his screen for an endless stretch of time, and he sits, holding his breath along with all the hope he has left, until the dots disappear altogether.

Which is fair, but still manages to hurt like hell.

Quentin shoves at the hair that's escaped his harried bun and unfolds from the sofa to his feet — Eliot clearly needs some time, but Quentin kind of needs oblivion, which seems like the perfect excuse to break into that forgotten bottle of Bordeaux.

He's halfway to the kitchen when the doorbell rings, but it's the quiet knock after that actually makes him answer. And when he swings the door open to El on the other side — with a bag in one hand, and his phone still glowing in the other — for the first time in his life, Quentin is all out of words.

Eliot's smile is small and soft and slightly amused, but his eyes are shining in the golden hour light.

"Hey."

Standing here on the doorstep, surrounded by Spanish architecture and lush gardens, with the sun setting all around him, Eliot is sure the sight of Quentin staring up at him in utter surprise and confusion and bright-eyed, brilliant, blinding hope is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

Still, Q's got to get over this strange habit of having conversations in doorways.

Eliot raises an eyebrow, ready to request an invitation inside like some sort of vampire, when Quentin finally blinks.

" _Hey_ was a few pretty heavy texts back," he says, and audibly swallows. "You're late."

 _Oh, Q,_ Eliot wants to say, _you have no idea_.

But Quentin steps back to let him in, without him having to ask, and Eliot starts to shake so suddenly that it's hard to say anything at all.

He moves into the living room and sets the bag down on the sofa, just to give himself a second to breathe. But they've both been stalling too long, that much is obvious, and he doesn't want to lose this breathtaking momentum in the name of building a buffer.

So he takes a big breath and turns to face Quentin, who's standing next to his chair with his arms tucked across his torso.

"I did get your texts," he says, holding up his phone. "And I don't exactly have the way with words that you do, Q, but… can I tell you what _I_ know?"

And Quentin, forever braver than Eliot will ever be, nods without a hint of hesitation.

"Okay." Eliot tosses his phone to the coffee table, taking a step towards him. "For starters, I know you sold a goddamn script. And that would never surprise me, Quentin, because you are _ridiculously_ talented, even if you're afraid of the success that will come with it. I know you can't help but bring out the best in people, because they want to be better for you. I know once you let people in you'll do almost anything to keep them from getting hurt, even if it means hurting yourself. That one, we need to have a serious talk about in the very near future."

He steps again, cutting the distance between them in half, that future so close he can touch it.

"I know that you're _so fucking brave_ , all the time, every minute of every day. And even when you get burned, or hurt, or… or rejected, you never give up, you never stop trying. Even if it's in a few _pretty heavy texts_."

Eliot is just moving now, forward, always forward, until he's so close he can see the tears in Quentin's eyes. And he can spot the difference so clearly now — he'd felt so exposed in those moments with Mike, but with Quentin, he feels _seen_.

"I know you have the biggest heart in the world, and all you ever do is crack open your chest and show it to people. And if they're really, _really fucking lucky_ , you just offer it up and give it away, without asking for anything in return." He shakes his head, the fullness in his chest ready to spill over, and lets himself lay his heart at this beautiful boy's feet. "I know pretending I wasn't in love with you is the hardest part I've ever had to play. I know that you're my _home_ , Q. And I'm sorry I had to go so far away to figure that out. I've never really had one before, and I didn't recognize it when it was right in front of my face. But I swear, it's all I've wanted since the second we met. So… I don't know if you're still offering —"

The confession is cut short by the look on Quentin's face, morphing from quiet disbelief to _oh my god, you're such a dumbass_ , and he's still marveling at how much he loves this fucking brat when Q cranes up to kiss him.

There's a strange split second of duality, just the space of one heartbeat, when the half of Eliot that never believed this could happen wages war on the half that knows this is what they're meant to be.

Then time starts moving again, and their mouths move together, and his whole world is nothing but Quentin.

Eliot licks into the heat of him, buries a hand in the hair at the nape of his neck and splays one across the curve at the small of his back. He hadn't had time for his heart to adjust before, with his head so full of panic. Now, he can focus on the solid weight of Quentin in his arms, feel every tiny point of contact — the featherlight sweep of lashes on his cheek and the fingers clutched around the vest at his back, the frantic pulse at the point where wrist meets throat, that could belong to either one or the other or be the beat of them both combined.

He scrapes his teeth along Q's lower lip, moans into the salty sweetness of his mouth, and Quentin pushes further up onto his toes, presses harder, holds tighter, until Eliot can't believe he thought he could settle for butterflies when there's a hurricane like this inside his skin.

Quentin rocks back on his heels like he's dizzy, and for a second, it seems like Eliot's arms are all that's standing between him and the floor. He smears his thumb across Q's cheekbone, sweeping the moisture there away, and Quentin smiles, drowsy and devastating, and just a little bit bratty at the edges.

"You know," he says, continuing the theme, "as narrative twists go, I did not see this coming."

It's perfectly Quentin, and adorable as hell, and Eliot has to lean in and brush their lips together again.

"Speaking of…" — though he's unsure how he's speaking _period_ , with all the breath wrung from his lungs — "and I'd hate to just assume, or read into anything, since your script wielded a frankly masterful use of subtlety and subtext, but — "

"I love you, El," Quentin cuts in. "I'm in love with you." And he shrugs, as if it was obvious, as if it isn't a goddamn _miracle_ , as if he hasn't just laid waste to Eliot's head and heart and central nervous system. "Not subtle. Just text."

Even plain and unvarnished, Quentin's words have power, the glorious weight of someone who knows Eliot inside and out and loves him anyway.

But Eliot's love language has always been about action, and there's a Grand Movie Gesture to be made.

"You know I'm more of a visual man, myself," he says, and his voice sounds paper thin. Moving away from Quentin is a masterclass in mind over matter. " I brought you something. Or, technically… I guess it's for us."

He snags the bag from the sofa and hands it to Q, watches him pull the box free.

The new puzzle is two thousand pieces of gradient color that looks like the last of a spectacular sunset, a smooth wash of peach and plum and bright, brilliant gold.

Eliot raises an eyebrow while Quentin gapes down at the image on the front of the box. Thinks of The Magician and The Fool and the moral of their story, once they're young men in their old lives again, with one being brave enough to hold out his heart and the other being brave enough to take it.

"I couldn't help but notice that you wrote us a happy ending."

"I wrote an _open_ ending," Q corrects, and then, begrudgingly, "that heavily implies the rest won't suck."

God, how hopelessly Quentin is that — to liken himself to some shitty Choose Your Own Adventure, or to Nolan and his spinning fucking top. To write this beautiful world that runs on love, and hope, and a life lived together, and think that it's somehow ambiguous.

And how endlessly lucky is Eliot, that Q has cast him in the role of the man who gets to prove him wrong.

"Semantics," he says. For now.

" _Jesus_." Quentin shakes the box, then shakes his head, looking up at Eliot with wide eyes. "This is gonna to take forever to finish."

Eliot opens his mouth to say something clever, something off-the-cuff, something chock full of carefully-crafted innuendo — _time is an illusion_ or _there's a method to my madness_ or _only if you do it right_ — but the weight of it hits him all at once, the knowledge that Quentin is the missing part of his heart the way that Margo is the other half of his soul, and all the scattered pieces of him have finally found their place, and he watches Quentin smile and his breath catches in his chest and what actually comes out is, "You promise?"

Quentin tosses the puzzle back to the sofa, his face wry and full of wonder. "I would've said 'you had me at _hey_ ' if it wasn't a play on the second worst line Cameron Crowe's ever written."

Eliot pulls his brows together, trailing a thumb along the line of Quentin's jaw just because he can. "What was the _first_?"

"'I am a golden god.'" Q snorts, hard enough that he might as well have just said _obviously_. "Although, I guess he technically lifted it from one of the guys in Led Zeppelin, who'd like, screamed it out on a photoshoot or something —"

" _Nope_ , forget I asked," Eliot cuts in, more complete than he's ever been. He never would have been happy with _enough_ , not when this is what _everything_ feels like. "Declarations have been made, tears have been shed, it's the final frame before the fade to black. Just kiss me, already, so we can start the ever after."

With a smile that feels like falling, Quentin reels him in by the knot in his tie.

"Happily."

It had taken some torturous trial and error to get them here.

The first time, Eliot had apparently been so thrown by the sheer sight of Quentin in a well-tailored suit that he'd spent half their stroll down the red carpet making a steady stream of filthy promises under his breath between photo ops, until Quentin was dumbstruck and slightly dizzy and strung so tight he was practically vibrating. The next, Quentin had upgraded to a tux and tied his hair back, and El had slid to his knees in the back of the limo and blown him until he was so blissed out he could barely make it out of the car.

But Eliot has it down to a science now, his prep schedule for every major event — face mask, full conditioning regimen, fuck Quentin until he forgets his own name.

Not necessarily in that order.

 _It's win-win_ , he'd said that first time, breezy and bright, while Quentin was still incapable of coherent speech. _You get to recover just enough to be loose and pliable for the press line, and I get to greet the cameras with something to really smile about._

And honestly, how could Quentin argue with logic like that?

It's been a solid system, one that's seen them through the Globes and the Oscars, two Met Galas, and as of just last week, Eliot's Emmy for the final season of _Scion_. El had skipped the face mask that night in favor of lounging lazily in bed together after, nerves silently eating at them both, and when he'd stood on that stage and given his speech and casually told the world that he loved Quentin like breathing, the memory of El's hands on his skin and El's heartbeat beneath his ear had been all that kept Quentin from passing out on camera.

He just isn't sure it's going to work for tonight.

For one thing, they aren't within the comfort of their own four walls, with Eliot wandering back and forth between rooms in various stages of undress, while Quentin, content to watch the show, sits as still as he's capable of and tries his best not to wrinkle.

The ottoman really is good for that.

They'd turned the spare bedroom into El's dedicated dressing room, a change he'd initially objected. _I don't want you to feel like I'm taking over your house_ , he'd said, at which Quentin had laughed a little and ached a lot. _Aside from the fact that the bedroom closet wouldn't even work for you_ empty _… you pretty much picked out everything in here_ , he had answered. _It isn't my house, El. It's always been ours._ So they'd brought in cabinets and a vanity, the velvet ottoman and the soft leather safari chair, though the crowned Cozy Horse remained. And the rest of the house hadn't changed much, besides the bar cart behind the sofa and the awards along the mantel and the finished puzzle mounted above the bed, and the energy from Eliot himself, larger than life and full of love, that made the house feel like a home.

He still gets a little rush whenever Eliot calls it that, and a bigger one at the warmth in his voice when he does.

But they aren't at home tonight, pregaming for one of El's big events in their own bed or shower or Cozy Horse closet. Instead, they're in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton with a view of the CN Tower.

And Quentin's movie is closing the Toronto Film Festival.

 _Technically_ , it's a Zoe Marcus film. The studio had wanted Van der Weghe, austere and established, who'd pitched a vision of a weathered, washed-out world outside of time, with shots layered and superimposed like a nonlinear montage and half the dialogue done via voiceover. Part of Quentin had been relieved when negotiations had fallen through, but every inch of him was grateful when they'd landed on Zoe, who'd brought such heart and soul to the project. Who'd painted each frame in shadow and light and rich, vibrant color, and built a world around his words.

He's watched the final cut with her already, knows exactly what to expect. But the same can't be said for Eliot… or just about everyone else.

Which is probably why he's still curled up on the chaise by the window, with the post-coital high fading and panic rapidly taking its place.

A throat clears behind him, and Quentin turns to see Eliot standing in the open doorway with a drink in hand, already in his slacks and shirt and shrugged into an unbuttoned vest in black-on-black brocade. Someday, he supposes, he'll get used to how stupidly beautiful this man is — or at least stop losing his breath at the sheer sight of him — but today is not that day.

El moves across the room to slide into the space beside him, crossing one leg over the other and propping an arm on the wide windowsill and still managing to sit with perfect posture.

"As film premiere fashion statements go," he says, "the bathrobe is certainly an unexpected choice." He smiles, soft and sweet and endlessly patient, and presses the tumbler he's holding into Quentin's hand, two fingers full of something fragrant and dark. "Not that I don't love your birthday suit, baby, but it might be time to get dressed."

Quentin sips at whatever's in the glass — oh good, brandy. "That depends. Am I supposed to throw up before or after I put on pants?" He takes a bigger swig, and it burns going down. "Do you think anyone would notice if I just, like, didn't go?"

"Do I think they'll notice an empty chair on stage for the Q and A?" Eliot blinks. "Probably." He leans over just enough to lay a hand on Quentin's leg. "You've been answering questions about this movie for months."

"That was before anyone had actually _seen_ it."

And now there'll be a few hundred eyes on him immediately after, all of them knowing exactly what years of pining after Eliot Waugh looks like, and he'll actually have to _talk to them about it._

It would be easier to handle with a weaker film. If the words weren't so raw, and the inspiration wasn't so real. If the cast wasn't such an obvious reflection. But The Fool they'd finally found, an unknown named Noah Andrews, resonates on Quentin's exact frequency of nervous energy, and Dev Patel's Magician is magnetic and multi-faceted and unmistakably Eliot. Everything — from the way it's shot to the way it's acted to the way the set design seemed to give the puzzle a life of its own — is _beautiful,_ in ways Quentin as a writer had only imagined, and he isn't sure he can properly articulate anything about it without sounding completely insane.

So, bathrobe.

He stares into the bottom of the glass, where the brandy is getting pretty thin. "It's been a long time since one of these was even a little about me, El, and I just… I still don't know how to do this."

"Okay," Eliot answers, easy and light, making Quentin look up just in time to catch the end of his single shoulder shrug. "Then it's a good thing that I am _oh so adept_ at making things all about me."

Quentin nearly rolls his eyes, since that's not true in the slightest. The fact that they're here on their own is proof of that, since Eliot had not only given his PA — a sweet, slightly strange guy named Charlton, who may not be the mind reader El swears he is but was a more than welcome addition after a month of Abigail, the world's laziest human — the week off, he'd also footed the bill for a first class trip back to his Pennsylvania hometown.

But Eliot obviously has a point to make here, so any objection would likely be moot.

"For instance," El says, "I am very much looking forward to being a plus one. I know you've settled into the supporting role on red carpets far and wide, but it was only a matter of time until _I_ was the arm candy, living my best trophy wife life, and everyone watching wondered what you'd done to deserve me, instead of the other way around."

Quentin does roll his eyes at that, but his face has already arranged itself into something fond and familiar.

"It's possible that I've been practicing for the reaction shots. Because this —" El circles the flat of his palm in front of Quentin's face "— may come completely natural to you, but I need to be able to walk that carpet, and stand at your side while you talk to press, and make it through the screening and the panel without looking like I'm seconds away from either bursting into tears or stripping you where you stand."

He reaches up to slide a hand under Quentin's hair and scratch lightly at the back of his neck. Years of training and blocking and filming from all angles have made sure El can find his light in a room with no windows — his eyes seem to shine no matter where and when he is, and here and now is no exception.

"If you really don't want to go, we won't. But as long as we're making this about me… _I_ want to be there when everyone in that room realizes how truly talented you are. I want to spend the next few hours doing nothing but being disgustingly proud of you in public. I want to hold your hand in the dark while we watch this incredible thing you created from scratch, inspired by how much you love me."

Quentin sucks in a breath. " _Eliot_."

But El just lets his hand slip down Quentin's chest to land in his lap, something wicked sparking in those bright eyes. "And then I want to strip you where you stand," he says. "But if I'm going to get you out of that suit later, we have to get you into it first. So what do you want to do here, Q?"

The long answer is that he wants to be worthy of every word falling from the mouth of the man he loves, wants to be every bit as brave as Eliot's always seemed to think he is.

The short answer is a simple sway forward, until that mouth is pressed warm and welcoming against his.

"I guess," he mutters, and feels Eliot's lips curl into a smile, the puff of laughter on his skin.

"You're such a brat."

"You love me anyway."

" _Because_ , baby." Eliot hums, pulling back just enough to catch his eyes. " _Anyway_ and _because_ and everything in between." He rubs at the inside of Quentin's knee, then takes the tumbler from his hands. "I'll get you a refill. Your suit's on the bed."

He gets gracefully to his feet, dropping a kiss on the crown of Quentin's head without a single break in his forward momentum.

Watching him go, Quentin can't help but wonder what he had ever done to deserve him, himself.

There is indeed a garment bag laid across the foot of the bed, bearing Kira's distinctive logo in the center. El had decided the occasion called for a completely custom suit, and at the first fitting, Quentin had made it about five minutes with El's eyes hot on him in the full-length mirror before he'd had to ban him from the room.

He's sort of excited about it now. Not just for the stripping to come, but for the hours before, when he'll actually look like he belongs at Eliot's side, the way El makes him _feel_ every day.

When he unzips the bag, he's greeted by the sight of a package in a familiar shape and size, impeccably wrapped in parchment paper. This one will be the tenth — words have come easier the last year and a half or so, and these have filled up more quickly than they used to.

It's kind of amazing, how productive happiness can be.

That first one seems like a lifetime ago — back when he'd barely known Eliot, and been in a bad relationship, and lost almost everyone who ever really mattered. Back before late nights of wine and puzzles and secrets shared over both, before they'd landed parts and sold scripts and made their dreams come true, before they had a home they'd built around each other and a family they'd found for themselves and a goddamn _horse_ housed in a stable nearby.

Before Eliot had stopped acting as if he didn't deserve to be loved, and Quentin had stopped writing himself off long enough to love him out loud.

But they're living in the ever after now, where the words have run out and the story has ended for everyone but the people in it. And like an epic series, like Eliot's endless string of journals, they get to turn the page, or open a new book entirely, and begin to tell another one.

And Quentin Coldwater has words to spare.

He unwraps the package and runs his fingers across the cover. This one doesn't even need a name.

_I do believe it's time for another adventure._

Grinning, he gets dressed.

FADE OUT.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to wrap up... I had a blast plopping these boys into this universe, and working them toward their happy ever after. This was my first time writing a true AU, and finding ways to merge Magicians canon with a world so completely removed from it was a creative challenge I will always treasure. In a lot of ways it came down to details, sometimes ones that might go entirely unnoticed but made it easier for me to ground the story. If anyone's interested in a rundown of those things, have a list!
> 
> * All of the projects mentioned, past present or future, were dreamed up specifically for this fic and are not actual films or shows in any stage of development (though I really wish they were!).
> * The pixel puzzle exists and is available to buy [here](https://bitlift.com/product/pixels-jigsaw-puzzle/). The gradient puzzle doesn't exist as described, since I wanted colors to reference the Mosaic, but it's relatively close to [this one](https://www.areaware.com/products/gradient-puzzle?variant=15562204086307).
> * I wrote the scene about Eliot's Malibu Dreamhouse from the vision I had in my head, went off weeks later in search for something close enough for E to use for the art, and pretty much [found it exactly](https://marisolmalibu.com/malibu-homes/marisol-modern/).
> * The journals Eliot gives Q are real! They're from [Soothi](https://soothi.com/collections/quotes-collection), and are gorgeous in person.
> * The Key Club, where Scion's wrap party was hosted, is not actually a reference to the key quest. It was a Sunset Strip institution for decades. Sadly, it closed in 2013, but we're just going to ignore that for the sake of fiction.
> * The Brakebills Lodge room keys, on the other hand, are another story. Quentin's room unlocks with the Time Key, Eliot's with the Illusion Key, and Margo's with the Truth Key (because _come on_ ).
> * Rockville, Indiana — about an hour from Whiteland — is part of Clarke County, which is home to the highest concentration of covered bridges in the world. There's a festival and everything. I've been.
> * Most of the farm is based on Los Vecinos, a live water ranch in Texas Hill Country not that far east of where I imagine fictional Brakebills to be. [Visit this site](https://www.texasranchsalesllc.com/listings/los-vecinos-ranch-1795-acre-ranch-uvalde-county/) if you'd like a little tour (or if you're in the market for a multimillion-dollar ranch!).
> * Fen's last name here, Cyllell, means "knife" in Welsh (though it is pronounced phonetically).
> * Screenplay formatting is a very specific animal. I've done my best to approximate it here, in the only way that looked decent on desktop and mobile. Hilariously enough, it's closest to correct in mobile landscape mode.
> * The way Q and Eliot's stand-in characters are referenced in the script — as The Fool and The Magician — is both a callback to canon and a twist on tarot. In the Major Arcana, The Fool represents innocence and originality and unbridled idealism, and ultimately, new beginnings. On the literal flip side, it can also mean recklessness and hopelessness in reverse. The Magician is the embodiment of the creative process and deliberate action, but also represents new opportunities in the context of careers (or missed ones, and self-doubt, in reverse), and new, deeper developments in the context of love (or the need for honesty and openness in reverse). It is the second card in the Major Arcana, right after The Fool. :)
> * The P/S, where Eliot and Mike land when they return to LA, is an ultra-exclusive terminal for private planes and catered to people with money to burn. Eliot is not a member, but Fogg absolutely is.
> * Mike's "old friend" in the Valley is totally Bayler.
> * In my mind, sometime in the not-so-distant future, Julia casually mentions on Corden that she's in a happy, healthy relationship with two very hot people, and if the anyone has anything to say about it, they can take it up with her girlfriend's right hook.
> * I loved the idea of Quentin being part of the reason some promising unknown finds his place on film. But even though I went in that direction, for me (and thanks to the infinite wisdom of my betas), fictional Noah Andrews is absolutely Logan Lerman — he comes closest to embodying the energy Jason Ralph gave Quentin, and I quite like the "former fantasy series star" parallels. (Dev Patel is the best possible stand-in for Mosaic-era Eliot. Fight me.)
>   
> There's a soundtrack, [Words to Love By](https://freneticfloetry.tumblr.com/post/628521394131664896/words-to-love-by-soundtrack-to-scenes-from-an), and you can find me on Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/freneticfloetry).
> 
> Thank you so very much for reading.


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